NatWest has successfully completed its first remortgage transaction on the PEXA platform, finalizing the process within just two working days of the mortgage offer. This rapid turnaround provides clear evidence of the benefits of digitisation and automation in the UK’s remortgage process.
The transaction is dramatically faster than the typical UK remortgage timeline, which normally takes between four and six weeks to complete. This accelerated timeframe was made possible through the use of automated workflows and real-time settlement capabilities embedded within PEXA’s purpose-built digital infrastructure.
A milestone for digital property completion
The milestone represents a major step in NatWest’s ongoing implementation of PEXA. The lender officially went live with fee-assisted remortgages last month, with plans to introduce sale and purchase transactions as the rollout continues.
PEXA currently provides the UK’s only FCA-regulated digital property completion infrastructure. The secure platform uniquely connects the movement of funds with the lodgement of title. Through its partnership with NatWest, PEXA is actively supporting faster completions on eligible remortgage transactions while improving certainty, transparency, and security for lenders, conveyancers, and customers.
Enhancing the customer journey
Barry Connolly, managing director for home buying and ownership at NatWest, highlighted the impact of the new digital infrastructure on the customer experience.
“Our focus is on making the home ownership journey faster and simpler for our customers,” Connolly stated. “This is an important milestone in our partnership with PEXA and a strong demonstration of how digital infrastructure can accelerate the remortgage process.”
Connolly also noted that the first remortgage customer to complete via PEXA gave the highest possible satisfaction scores for the transaction. “We are really excited about the impact of this enhanced service we can now offer, and are committed to a wider roll out, including sale and purchase transactions,” he added.
Moving from weeks to days
Joe Pepper, UK chief executive of PEXA, emphasized how the platform achieves these unprecedented speeds by orchestrating multiple activities in parallel.
“Completing a remortgage in just two working days from offer to completion shows what can be achieved when manual steps are removed and processes are better connected,” Pepper explained. “This was possible because the PEXA platform enables lodgement, settlement and data synchronisation activities to be orchestrated in parallel within a single, integrated environment.”
According to Pepper, this drastically reduces the industry’s reliance on manual intervention, allowing transactions to complete with far greater speed, certainty, and control once they are ready to proceed.
“This is an early example, but it points to the opportunity for the UK to move from a system where transactions take weeks to complete, to one where they can be completed in days with far greater certainty, transparency and security,” Pepper concluded.
