PEXA is progressing a strategic partnership with UK lender NatWest that will see it use PEXA’s digital property exchange technology to deliver 48-hour remortgage transactions to its customers.

It will then extend its use of the PEXA platform to speed up the handling of sale and purchase transactions.

NatWest Managing Director, Homebuying and Ownership, Miguel Sard, said good progress had been made, having tested PEXA’s payment scheme with the Bank of England.

He said the technology would help make the bank simpler and faster for its customers.

“At the heart of our strategy for growth is anticipating and meeting our customers’ needs, using data and technology to ensure we are simple to deal with,” Mr Sard said.

“We are delighted to be partnering with PEXA and will be working with the team closely over the coming months to help us deliver on our strategy by enabling its world-leading digital property exchange platform for the benefit of our customers and the broader UK property ecosystem.”

UK Chief Executive Officer of PEXA, Joe Pepper, said PEXA was excited to be working with the NatWest Group.

“As one of the UK’s major lenders, NatWest shares a common goal of driving digital innovation and transforming the customer experience to address the chronically long time it takes to transact property in the UK market, with all the associated pitfalls of transaction fall-through and stress,” he said.

“The property settlement process in the UK is highly challenged.

“Relative to similar markets, transaction fail rates are unacceptably high and the time to complete transactions is overly long.

“We welcome the opportunity to work with NatWest Group and partner with a lender committed to solving these issues with us.

“We look forward to helping implement our technology to improve the NatWest customer experience.”