Trust scheme for home buying and selling set to become the central hub for consumers.

Estate Agents, Licensed Conveyancers and Mortgage intermediaries operating in Chiswick, Battersea, Clapham, Putney, Wimbledon, Richmond, Kew, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Harrogate and York are to be the first to benefit this year from trails of a new trust scheme to make home buying and selling a safe and secure digital process. These geographical areas have been agreed by the trial participants in the Residential Property industry. Further areas may be added next year.

The trust scheme, called MyIdentity, is set to become the central hub for consumers, to help them prove who they are once only in a secure digital way. Under the scheme, home buyers and sellers will no longer be repeatedly asked to give their details to all the parties involved in the chain of transactions. The move means quicker completions and more control over how they share their identity details and who they share their identity details with.

The Residential Property industry, made up of estate agents, solicitors and conveyancers, financial intermediaries and mortgage lenders will recognise MyIdentity as the acceptable source of identity verification because everyone will work to one set of Government-backed standards. For the Residential Property industry, the combined effect of reducing the number of identity verifications that a consumer has to go through means happier customers and lighter administration processes together with a better way of mitigating the risk of property and mortgage fraud.

Stuart Young, Director of Etive Limited, the technology company delivering the trust scheme, said: “We are really pleased that the Residential Property industry has come together on this to work and improve such an important aspect of the home buying and selling process”.

“Working with MHCLG and DCMS, as well as all the necessary regulators and representative bodies, we expect to be in a position to run real live customers and transactions through the new scheme from October of this year” he said.

The scheme will be known as MyIdentity and the web site is www.myidentity.org.uk, making it easy for both consumers and the sector to understand how the new scheme works.

Trials have started and are expected to run until August 2022. The following organisations have all given their backing for MyIdentity:
Association of Mortgage Intermediaries, Building Societies Association, CIFAS, CILEx Regulation, Council for Licensed Conveyancers, Conveyancing Association, FCA, Financial Ombudsman, Guild of Property Professionals, HM Land Registry, Home Builders Federation, Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association, Law Society, National Trading Standards Estate & Letting Agency Team, Propertymark, RICs, RPSA, Society of Licensed Conveyancers, Solicitors Regulation Authority and UKFinance.