Agents – can facial recognition ID help to speed up the sales and rental process?

19 May 2021 41264 Views

In recent years, the property market has been taking steps to become more digital – with HM Land Registry leading the way on this in many respects, with its Digital Street project, experimentation with blockchain, online mortgage deeds and other innovation.

But, despite this and the rapid rise of PropTech, many aspects of the sales and rental process remain clunky, slow, frustrating and prone to delays and issues.

It was recently revealed that One Mortgage System (OMS), a single-input enquiry to completion processing platform, has partnered with Nivo, a secure mobile messaging platform, to offer facial recognition ID verification.

The system helps to navigate the previous requirement for certified ID, usually provided by a solicitor, with ID verified by using machine learning and facial recognition to check the applicant is the genuine owner of an authentic passport, driving license or national ID card.

In addition to being ‘quick and simple to use’ for all applicants, the system aims to eliminate the human error often associated with hard-copy documents as well as helping to mitigate the chances of fraud occurring.

“We are always looking for ways to streamline the application to completion process for our users and working with like-minded service providers who can add real value to any intermediary proposition,” Neal Jannels, managing director of One Mortgage System (OMS), commented.

“Despite information security, data privacy and compliance [being] cited as top priorities, a lot of intermediary firms tend to struggle with digital transformation projects.”

What is needed is something that is quick to deploy, simple to integrate and whose benefits are quickly evident, as well as being something that can speed up and simplify ‘an antiquated ID verification process across a mortgage market which is swiftly catching up to other areas of financial services from a tech perspective’.

Matthew Elliott, chief development officer at Nivo, says lenders and brokers love the system because ‘it makes it easy for them to offer the kind of modern mobile experience that customers expect’.

How could agents benefit from facial ID recognition?

One of the biggest causes of frustration and delay in any sales or rental transaction is the need to confirm and authenticate ID documents. The process, which is largely still done manually, can prove cumbersome and slow things down for all parties.

In the sales market, it could help to speed up this important part of the process – by making it quicker and simple, while also remaining fully secure at all times. By making it more automated and immediate, it would not only reduce the chances of human error, but also free up agents to get on with other work to progress a transaction.

In the rental market, meanwhile, it could help agents with elements like referencing and Right to Rent checks, making the process speedier and more secure. Consumers nowadays expect convenient and easy solutions in a digital, mobile format – even more so post-Covid where face-to-face contact is more difficult or less desirable.

Facial ID software is still in its relative infancy, and isn’t yet used in a widespread manner (in either the property industry or elsewhere), but it seems like this will change over the next few decades as life becomes ever more contactless and digital-friendly. Some people already use facial recognition to get into their phones, homes or cars, and it seems likely this kind of technology will only continue to advance in the coming years.

Property has a real chance to get ahead of the game and be a trendsetter in this regard, as long as it can be done in a safe, secure, convenient way.

A greater use of tech

Here at Gnomen, we have long been banging the drum for greater use of tech in estate agency. To this end, we provide best-in-class, all-in-one, cloud-based software system, to allow you to manage your business from anywhere in the world, at the click of a button. We were well ahead of the remote working revolution and have established systems in place to allow agencies to thrive, no matter what model they employ or what model they will use in the future.

As well as software, we also help agents to create slick, user-friendly websites – acting as your virtual shop window as window browsing itself continues to decline. We can also provide 24/7 client portals to enable sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants to have a fully interactive experience.

For more information about our services, and why we believe tech like facial ID recognition could be the future, please get in contact with us today.