Helping PEXA build and scale technology to bring its proposition to new markets

The challenge

PEXA is a world-leading, digital property exchange and data insights business, listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. Its aim is a noble one – to scale its platform and technology, built on AWS Cloud, to ensure all conveyancers and lenders can transact property seamlessly, minimizing delays. The platform is designed to reduce the level of manual paperwork and administration that needs to be coordinated through all stakeholders to complete any transaction, and in Australia it has facilitated more than 20 million property settlements. That equates to c. 90% of all Australian property transfer settlements being processed through the PEXA platform.

To continue its success and build bespoke innovative solutions in other regions, PEXA launched its remortgaging capability in the UK in 2022. It engaged with Thoughtworks, having already seen the benefits of our work as a key element to success in Australia, to investigate the current state of play in the UK, and how best to approach this challenge.

The Thoughtworks approach

The UK market represented a significant growth opportunity for PEXA as it saw the scale of the challenge and the need to streamline processes and reduce friction for the benefit of all. Remortgaging, especially in the aftermath of Covid-19 and the Mini-Budget, in which borrowers saw mortgage rates skyrocket, was too arduous and there was scope to work in a collaborative way with the market and all its key players – conveyancers, lenders, brokers, regulators, government bodies and existing third party tech providers alike – to find a long-term solution that works for all.

To do so effectively, it needed to build the business case to secure investment. It engaged Thoughtworks to deliver such insight following the successful partnership between the two companies in Australia. We built a specialist ‘customer delivery’ team across three regions – Australia, India and the UK – to work with PEXA’s dedicated financial analyst. The team carried out a 12-week discovery programme looking into the desirability, feasibility and viability of succeeding in the UK, as well as a simultaneous technical investigation to validate the technology itself with bespoke delivery options and a go to market revenue plan. 

The final report presented PEXA with:

1. A summary of the property transaction landscape in the UK, including the ecosystem actor profiles and systemic pain points;
   
   
2. A five-stage product release plan with features mapped to their existing solution architecture;
   
   
3. An estimated delivery and team ramp-up plan encompassing the first four product releases over three years;
   
   
4. A customer discovery playbook supported by project documentation in Confluence to enable PEXA to run their own future discoveries for other markets.

The result

PEXA took the report and Thoughtworks’ tailored recommendations and used it to build a convincing business case to secure further investment for the UK venture. It did so successfully, and as such the partnership with Thoughtworks delivered significant positive impact, including the below tangible results:

This approach has led to PEXA also launching a full Future Property Transactions Group to drive the collaboration needed to increase efficiency and speed of transactions for borrowers.