Connells Group, Lloyds Banking Group and LMS have launched a digital homebuying service across England and Wales, integrating estate agency, mortgage and conveyancing services into a connected workflow.
The platform aims to reduce transaction times by linking lenders, agents and legal services more directly, addressing delays that frequently arise during conveyancing and mortgage processing. According to the partners, the system is designed to reduce reliance on paper-based administration and manual handoffs between parties.
Housing secretary Steve Reed commented: “Too many people who have bought or sold a home will know this feeling all too well – months of waiting, chasing and worrying, with sales liable to fall through at any moment. It can quickly become a living nightmare.”
Reed added: “I’m pleased to see Lloyds Banking Group, Connells Group and LMS showing what’s possible by getting the right information to the right people earlier, cutting the delays and uncertainty that make moving home so stressful.”
Digital sale readiness
Under the new model, sellers will be required to become “digital sale ready” at an earlier stage, with property details, identity verification and documentation captured upfront via Moverly. Buyers will undergo source-of-funds checks earlier through Armalytix, allowing affordability and financial readiness to be confirmed sooner.
Identity verification will be completed once and reused across parties, reducing repeat requests. Property searches will be made available alongside listings where possible, with the aim of reducing late-stage issues that can delay or derail transactions.
The service operates across residential sales and purchases in England and Wales involving Connells branches, LMS-panel conveyancers and Lloyds Banking Group as lender. Using LMS’s National Property Transaction Network (NPTN), the platform allows property, identity and financial data to be captured once and shared securely between authorised parties.
Industry digitisation
The announcement comes amid wider government and industry pressure to improve transaction times and increase efficiency in the homebuying system. The current process is frequently criticised for repeated information requests, limited transparency and delays caused by late discovery of issues during conveyancing.
The initiative follows broader digitisation efforts across the property sector, with policymakers increasingly focused on reducing friction in the sales process and improving certainty for buyers and sellers.
Andrew Asaam, homes director at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “The process of buying or selling your home is too stressful, too slow, too laborious, and often collapses through no fault of your own. With this new digital service, we aim to cut the stress, increase the speed, reduce the workload for customers and limit the number of transactions that fall through.”
Chris Rosindale, COO at Connells Group, commented: “Society needs a faster, more reliable, fully digitised housing transaction system that increases certainty, reduces fall-throughs and supports housing mobility. We believe in reform that makes the system faster, more transparent and more reliable.”
Nick Chadbourne, CEO at LMS, added: “The industry has spent years diagnosing the problem. NPTN is infrastructure that delivers the solution. This initiative signals a serious move away from siloed processes and toward genuine market-wide reform.”
The system is aligned with the Property Data Trust Framework (PDTF), with the partners stating it has been designed for wider industry adoption. The initiative also involves technology partners including Credas, TM Group and Novus Strategy, alongside Moverly and Armalytix.
The platform represents one of the first attempts to integrate multiple stages of the homebuying process into a single digital workflow across England and Wales, following recent government efforts to reform various aspects of the property sector.
