LMS, a UK conveyancing services provider, is participating in the Bank of England‘s Synchrorisation Lab through its NPTN network. The initiative is examining how synchronised settlement could support a more efficient and secure remortgage process for lenders and other transaction stakeholders.
Despite broader digitisation across financial services, property transactions remain heavily reliant on manual processes. Currently, there is often poor alignment between payment finality, legal completion, and charge registration. For lenders, these timing gaps create significant settlement risk, operational friction, and avoidable completion delays.
The Bank of England’s Synchronisation Lab is exploring whether synchronising the movement of money and assets using central bank money could address these structural challenges at their root.
Testing synchronised settlements
Working in eight-week testing cycles, NPTN will trial a synchronised remortgage process within the Lab’s simulated Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) environment.
This testing will involve splitting payments into ‘earmark’ and ‘settle’ stages via the RTGS system, while ensuring alignment with wider industry processes such as priority search, advance notice, and charge registration.
LMS currently operates at the heart of the home buying ecosystem, connecting over 4,000 law firms and more than 45 lenders, and successfully managing around 450,000 transactions each year. Through NPTN, LMS is bringing together payments infrastructure, digital identity, and legal processes to reduce risk across the entire conveyancing journey.
Nick Chadbourne, CEO of LMS, commented: “We’ve already used the NPTN sandbox to work collaboratively with 15 lenders to test use cases that improve the journey. Through the Synchronisation Lab, we can deepen that collaboration by ensuring synchronisation cuts settlement risk and streamlines completion, giving lenders greater certainty, while also aligning with the requirements of our law firm partners as we explore the future of the home buying and selling process for all key stakeholders.”
Replacing manual checks
The work within the Lab builds upon existing NPTN initiatives designed to modernise the sector. These include reusable digital ID, qualified electronic signatures, and using Open Banking for Source of Funds checks. The latter is currently in testing to replace the manual checks that are still used in over 80 per cent of property transactions.
An anonymous participating lender highlighted the potential industry impact, stating: “Synchronised settlement has the potential to materially reduce settlement risk and speed up completion. The Lab gives lenders confidence these improvements can be achieved in practice.”
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