We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
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We Are Selling with Lee Woodward
The Digital Settlement Workflow That Removes Agency Risk.
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We talk with River Realty’s Andy Brownhill about moving deposits and settlement into a digital workflow that gives the whole team real-time visibility and reduces trust account risk. Then, Riverstone Partners CEO Lucas McEntee breaks down why agencies adopt the Agency Portal and how the six-step process saves time while improving compliance and control.
• Why manual deposit handling creates a single point of failure
• how deposits are requested, paid, and tracked in real time
• auction night payments via QR code, BPAY, and PayTo
• settlement workflow through PEXA and automatic commission protection
• fewer email chains through a live dashboard and permissioned access
• legal industry reactions and the shift toward digital settlement norms
• AML readiness, audit trails, and fraud risk reduction
• team capacity, burnout reduction, and per-transaction pricing
In your show notes, there is a hyperlink that says "send a message to Lee." You can either type one or use our new feature to record. It could be an objection, something you want fixed. Send it through, and I will cover it in the program.
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Welcome And Platform Context
SPEAKER_00Hello and welcome back to the podcast We Are Selling. My name is Lee Woodward, your coach and host, and the author of the Complete Sales Person course. Today's programme is brought to you by the Agency Portal, Australia's first listed to settled execution platform. This incredible digital platform allows us to use Agency Sign, Agency AML, the sale funding process, commission funder, agency supplier pay, and agency settlements. Agency settlements is the Pixar partner that allows the real estate digital transaction to exist. Let's get started with today's podcast. Joining us now from River Realty in New South Wales is Mr. Andy Brownhill. Andy, welcome to the program. Thanks, Lee. Andy, you've been on our program before. You've also spoken at the Complete Leader. Today, completely different. You're one of the early adopters of the digital sale process, that six-step movement right through to settlement. Andy, your job at the company is management operations. You're looking at efficiencies all the time. A lot of our listeners don't know what the digital sequence or sale is. Take us from the beginning. Why did you bring in the agency portal to manage this flow for you?
SPEAKER_02But the trust accounting side really hadn't kept kept up with that pace. I think traditionally, and it's probably the same in other organizations, but for us, definitely the deposit handling and settlements were sat with one person within the business. We had a trust accountant, and you might have one or two people doing that. And at the end of the day, that creates a single point of failure. There's limited visibility across the business. And the manual processes involved in that really open job to higher risk situations. As we scaled as a business, we had more agents, it meant more transactions, and there was more complexity around commissions, splits and conjunctions, that side of things. So, but at the same time, clients still expect speed, transparency, and security. And there's always that there's that added regulation and compliance side of things that everyone's thinking about now as well. You know, we've modernized how we market property and how we communicate, but the way deposits and settlements aren't really caught up.
SPEAKER_00How long have you been on the platform now? Because you're one of the first people to move on to something like this, especially within the area where you are.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. We started using it in February this year, which is pretty much as soon as uh the platform became available.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So the admin overload burnout situation that goes right across this industry, the platform doesn't get overloaded. Take us through how you're using it so our listener can understand what is this workflow digital sale process. Take us from the beginning to the end of what you've achieved.
Deposit Handling From Offer To Receipt
SPEAKER_02Property goes under offer or through issuing a sales advice. And the deposit uh process is initiated via agency settlements at that point. So funds are directed into their trust account instead of our also. You know, I know that information's been out there, but this is a registered law firm with their own trust account and managed and audited just as anyone else is. It's tracked in real time. Everybody in the team gets notifications and status updates about when a request is made and when it actually is paid. Once the deposit's complete, it moves through to their settlement workflow and it's integrated into their disbursement process.
SPEAKER_00Wow. This is obviously fixed that Saturday day, it's an auction. I've got to pay my deposit. I don't have a check for that amount. I'm using seven different bank accounts. This is using Bpay, and you're, I think you'll add up to 999,000. How's that being received by the consumer?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, generally pretty good. I mean, we've you're always going to encounter people that haven't quite caught up to the modern way of working. We had one person not long ago who did want to make a payment and they didn't even even have internet banking. So there was not much we could do in that regard. So back to uh over to the bank and do a manual transfer. But other than that, it has been from a ease of use and flexibility perspective. The general community have taken it up really, really well. So as you said, they can pay via Vpay or can or pay two. They've got two different options through that system and it's completely instant. It's in the dashboard straight away. So we know when it's when the request has been sent and we know when it has been completed.
SPEAKER_00Just for our listener, I'm there at the auction, I'm the successful bidder, everyone's screaming and shouting around me. How do I then say to you, what do I do? How do I pay this deposit?
Auction Night Payments Via Link
SPEAKER_02So by then, I would expect my team, especially to know who is going to be coming to the auction for the most part. So we generally know who's going to be making bids that night as re when they're registered. So we've already got all their information ready. The successful bidder on the night, their information's put in, their name, number, email address, their solicitor information as well. That's important to know who who they're who we're going to be working with from a legal perspective because this all does go through the PEXA workspace. Then they can we can select what their deposit needs to be on that night. They can receive a link direct to their email or via text message, or they can just scan a QR code, which is for them. And it takes them to their specific payment options where they can select BPAY or pay to and it's all taken care of securely with two-factor authentication. So we all know that it's a completely above board.
SPEAKER_00That is absolutely unbelievable. We've all had this moment where people rock in on a Monday and the administrator says there's half a million dollars in the trust account. Does anyone know whose it is?
SPEAKER_02Who does this belong to? Yeah, there's no reference.
SPEAKER_00Versus the platforms generated the QR code, which is specifically for that property, has to go through to that. And this platform is AI driven. If that happens, this must happen. If that happens, that must happen. But now it's going right through to settlement and it's a PEXA partner and doing the settlement. Now, Andy, you're a very detailed, conservative person there when it comes to risk and reward. How was it letting that part happen that the settlement process will be done by the platform?
SPEAKER_02I think it's one of those things that you don't take lightly from a decision perspective. But for us as a business, it made sense. As many people did, we we heard agency settled Rubberstone partners talk at the Complete Leader Conference last year. We were already honored with them, with their sale funder program. This fixed a problem that we knew that we had at that moment in time anyway. So I understand that it probably would be something that as soon as people mention the trust account at all, people get a little bit nervous. But this has freed us up so, so much. And especially from a uh a settlement perspective, the proof has been in the pudding. We've seen it happen. It's instantaneous. Everybody gets their money on the day, including our commission, is transferred that day and it was all settled seamlessly through Pecca.
Settlement Automation And Live Visibility
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we've had instances in the past where the lawyers didn't protect the income for the agent, and then there's a we've got to chase this routine versus that can't happen in a digital settlement. All that's done automatically, and then when it settles, I believe it actually sends the sales device to everyone. All that's done in digital in AI. Explain that part.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so everyone that is involved in that transaction gets notified exactly when something has happened. So for us, it looks a little bit overkill from an admin perspective sometimes, but it just depends on your permissions in there. We've got marketing payments coming in for properties, we've got 0.25% deposits, we've got completed 10% deposits, and then we've got settlements and commission payments too. So we know all the time. We can go into that live dashboard, we can see where a property's up to, we know exactly when it's meant to settle, we can adjust it if the settlement date needs to change, we can adjust that live and it's all instantaneous. It is no relying on sending an email here, waiting for something to come back, trying to find out well, where did that go? Did it go to junk? No, it's all in the dashboard. So if you need to know something, you can go there.
SPEAKER_00Now, Andy, I remember when Pexar first came in and the legal society went nuts that this is wrong, it's it shouldn't be happening, it should happen the way it's happened with a ribbon around a folder or something like that, and people shouting out names in a room to settle, and then suddenly Pexar just became the greatest tool ever, and everyone's welcomed that on board. What's been the reaction to another platform coming in like this, which again is tightening that process of no mistakes?
SPEAKER_02We've had mixed reaction from our legal colleagues. Some people have seen this as a way to move forward and knowing that this is something that has to happen. So we better get on board and be early adopters like we have been. And they've embraced it and they championed that process as well. And I think it wouldn't be unfair to say that some people have been a little bit hesitant, but that's their job from a conservative perspective, from a legal perspective. They do want to keep at arm's length sometimes to make sure that everything is above board, and that is their job. And that is exactly what they're that they they're meant to do. I think, you know, whenever something novel or groundbreaking does come in, it's going to shake a few trees. And that's really what it's done at the moment, and that's what we've experienced uh in that side on that side of the transaction. So what it's actually done though is create stronger ties with our, especially our local conveyances and solicitors, whom we have to work with on a daily basis, but we haven't really worked with, if that makes sense. They're out of the transaction, but we're not talking to them all the time, and we're not necessarily treating them like colleagues, I'd say would be traditionally the case. However, this sort of thing has opened up some doors and relationships for us, and it's actually been it's been really good in that in that regard.
SPEAKER_00Visibility reduces stress. And as you mentioned before, going back and forth by email and we didn't see it and it went to junk, that is just nuts versus let's go onto the dashboard, it's progressed. It's our settlements changed, that's okay, the system's altered for it, it will all happen on this date, versus this massive email war that has to go on per property, and you guys are doing a lot of sales a month, but it wouldn't matter now if you're doing a thousand sales a month because the system won't overload. As a leader and manager, what's it meant to you behind the scenes bringing something like this together as a critical project?
Legal Reactions And Stronger Relationships
SPEAKER_02Being able to rely on its functionality has been the biggest thing for me. Because obviously, when we took this on, it was it was something that was wasn't, as I said, wasn't taken lightly. I've just been over the moon with the fact that, you know, we had we had some robust processes in place to ensure that clarity and accuracy was taken place. We always had that. However, I could always see that there was a risk there where there's too many people that are involved in this process, i.e., requesting bank details, calling to ensure that those bank details are correct, making sure that the details that they receive are then entered accurately within the database, which is then utilized to transfer. None of that matters anymore because it's all taken care of within that secure PEXA workspace. So long as everyone collaborates and utilizes it from a legal perspective, then it's so much more secure than, as I said, we've got somebody calling to check bank details details. We've got somebody receiving it in an email, which from uh a risk of prevention perspective is really not above audio, in my opinion. We haven't got people calling for updates or chasing emails, as you said, and we're not guessing where the funds are at. Everyone's got access to that dashboard and different permissions on it, but anyone from front of house, if they receive a call right through to sales, admin, and leadership, can see where everything's up to. So what used to sit in one person's head or their inbox is now visible across the entire business in real time.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely amazing. So that's the sales process. Let's go back a few steps because another thing you were trying to fix, which is brand new to all of us, was AML. You're using the platform to sign the authority, then what happens? How are you fixing the AML part?
AML Readiness And Fraud Protection
SPEAKER_02We're not yet. So that's that section hasn't been finalized by the team yet, but we are on board for that. I think everyone knows that their AML obligations are to be finalized very shortly. We're enrolled in the training course that Riverstone Partners are involved in. So we'll be doing that in Sydney in the next couple of weeks, and we're all and we're booked in to be building our platform uh for that as well. The main thing for me is from a risk reduction perspective and our compliance perspective, the agency settlements platform isn't just efficiency, it is about protection. So there's plenty, as we know, there's increasing concern around fraud, misdirected funds, email scams. This platform introduces structured processes that verify payment flows and reduce manual handling. It does support part of that AML expectation, which is important. It keeps those audit trails. So anyone that does have a single person utilize running their trust account, bear in mind that your audit trails are going to have to be completely up to date. And I wouldn't be relying on your CRM system to be doing that for you. But it supports the accountability side of things as well. We're not fixing something that's broken. We're just trying to future-proof the business.
SPEAKER_00Now, Andy, we live in a world where recruitment is everything, and quite often we want to get our own people doing better things. How's this changed your team situation with the platform coming in?
Staffing Burnout And Per Transaction Costs
SPEAKER_02As I said, we were at a we were at a point in time where we were going through a growth phase and we'd we'd been through a period of change from an operational perspective and leadership perspective. So the team members who were in charge of trust accounting previously were no longer in the business. That responsibility initially had been absorbed by other leaders and our licensing charge solely at River. And then we tried another third-party approach as well. That didn't really fix anything other than freeing up app at our our time within the business itself. So our efficiencies were improved, obviously, in terms of the responsibilities that were taking place. We outsourced that. However, it didn't fix the things that we knew needed to be fixed from a risk reduction perspective, from a human error perspective. There was still another human pushing the buttons and potentially opening us up to risk. So, and that as well, that wasn't a more cost-effective scenario as well. So then we we come to the conclusion: well, do we hire another in-person trust accountant or two? And how much is that going to cost compared to the cost of agency settlements, which there is no comparison. Agency settlements is charged on a per transaction basis. So it makes sense from a budgeting perspective, too.
SPEAKER_00And how great not to have another subscription coming in in the tech stack. So, you know, if you guys are rocking, you've done 50 sales for the month, or it's acquired a month and there's 10 sales for the month, you're paying per transaction. It doesn't matter how many you do.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. And we don't want to delay. We've never worried about what our legal requirement is in terms of dispersing settlement funds. We've always said if a property settles, we will be dispersing on that day. However, there have been instances where previously we've had the majority of monthly settlements happen in one week sometimes. To put on the the shoulders of one person is just impractical as well. As he said, it doesn't matter whether they there's 30 transactions in a week or three transactions in a week. We're paying the same per transaction.
SPEAKER_00Well, Andy, people we listen to this interview in six months' time thinking everyone does that. Whereas right now they don't. It's a massive issue. I've got some companies out in regional Australia and they're doing 50 sales a month and they burnt out their third trust account officer because it's too much pressure. And it's not just administrative pressure. This house is not going to settle because we've missed that. And these people think they're moving in. There's no bigger part of the whole process than settlement. And to see it now done in this manner, and I love that it's a legal perspective, it's not just a piece of technology, it's all connected in one. And then I suppose for yourselves and the leaders and owners of the business, it's not your trust account. You know, having that audited is one thing, but having it separate to you keeps it separate to you. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02It's freed us up to do the things that we need to do. I would much rather be spending my time increasing leads for the business and working on that lead generation platform that we we're so passionate about than running around and making sure that all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed for settlements. It's all taken care of, and I couldn't be happier.
CEO View On Adoption Drivers
SPEAKER_00Well, Andy Bernhill, thank you for joining us. I need it's someone from the field in the streets that's gone and done it versus everyone's talking about it, but who's activated it and the fact it's just worked so well. Look forward to hearing from you in the future. And thank you for joining us on We Are Selling. Thanks, Lee. Speak soon. And joining me now is the CEO of Riverstone Partners, the actual owner of the Agents Portal, Lucas McIntyre. Welcome back to our Airwaves. G'day, Lee. How are you? Very well. Listening to Andy speak there. That's been a bit of a life-changing moment for that company. And a company that's always, for the last five years, been looking at efficiencies. What can we do? How do we streamline it? And to see and hear that today was just excellent. But take us into how the rest of the country is responding because the platform's not brand new. It's been fully operational since August last year.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's right. Our biggest problem is actually just getting everyone to know we're around and just trying to make sure we can service everyone. We've been so busy since then and hearing any talk before, it's exactly what we do it for. It's just great to get that feedback and to hear it from a first-hand user of our services.
SPEAKER_00A lot of agents who've reached out to me, and I know you've onboarded another two companies that I work with this week. What's the attraction to go for the platform instead of the labor of people? And yes, I know there's a cost in people, and we're not trying to replace people. We're trying to make the people we've got more effective so we don't keep scaling and labor. But what's been that attraction of changeover?
SPEAKER_01It's a good question. There's probably four major points, and but three three main drivers. So the first one is agents might have felt they were losing control of the process. When once they saw how our service worked, they actually still have complete control of managing the deposit and managing their commissions. They're not outsourcing that service out of their business. All we're doing is using technology to make it much, much more efficient. The next one was, you know, is this legal and can I do this? And I'm a bit scared. What will fair trading say? When we sort of take them through to say, look, we're an incorporated law firm, we've got the Law Society of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, ACT, TASI, we're all covered under those law societies, so it'll be comfort there. But a big one as well is hearing our conversations with the Office of Fair Trading, certainly in New South Wales, about they love the fact that it's a regulated licensed trust account. So once they get that understanding that it's, you know, perfectly fine and safe to use and it can plug into the workflow, that's a big tick. The final one really is the amount of time we save. So it's the constant, ongoing, repetitive nature of the license-sell process. That's the same thing over and over again. We've used that technology to remove a lot of those repetitive things that people don't know they do until they don't do it anymore. So our sort of process is to look, just give it a try, just put through five or six listings, and then they can see all the time, money, transparency that they save. It's little things like the agent calling, the trusted cam manager has the deposit paid, or a daily transfer limit for a buyer, that's a problem, or a PEXA date changing, and you know, they don't realise, or an order of the agent being poor. So it's all these little tiny incremental improvements that we've given the agency when they take care of the elicitor settle process with the agency portal that they only really see and benefit once they start to give it a go.
SPEAKER_00And you can now understand how our real estate industry has burnt out so many trust account officers with the amount of stuff you're trying to remember as a human, and then there is a day change, or there is a bank change, or there is a delay, versus in digital it's trackable versus did I remember? And taking that pressure off that person means our normal administration staff can watch the bouncing ball go through to settlement. Absolutely correctly.
SPEAKER_01So if you think about a vanilla transaction where everything works perfect, you can train somebody and you can scale that. But that almost never happens. So what our system does is and and the other thing too to take into account is that the that trust account manager isn't in control of a conveyor or PEXA, all the banks. So because we plug into those things, we give a lot of transparency to the agency to see what the other party is doing that's involved in the sale process. And then also too, once you've built out that digital ball and that trackable process, you can actually expand that role out that other people within the group that don't need to have a significant amount of experience can start to deal with this process. So it's made people a lot more efficient where they can be scalable. We had a lot of trust account managers sort of tapping out at two, three hundred sales a year and then. You have to employ another brand new person to just do another 20 or 30 sales. They're not really efficient, of course. So with our system, they're they're five or six times more efficient. It's transparency across the process with everyone in the office and the sale process and just gives that person more control, which just means they can do their job where there's a lot less stress and and a lot happier people in the admin team.
The Six Step Listed To Settled Sequence
SPEAKER_00So that makes it really Australia's first true AI-driven, listed to settled execution platform because it is one space. It is being sequenced by a legal firm versus when we see all these integrations from software companies, this is a legal process. We are settling title here with people and banks. In that original audio that I did with you, it made sense that that would be done in that way. But just for our listener that didn't get to listen to the original audio, take us through the sequence of the platform milestones that allow this execution of the platform to go. It starts at sign, take us through.
SPEAKER_01The benefit with the portal is you can take one or all six products. You don't have to take every single service. But we've included a digital signature solution enabling people to get listing agreements or sale contracts digitally signed, which then will automatically trigger an AML request. And that request is sent to the seller at the time of the agency agreement and to the buyer at the time of signing sale contract. Also, too, once those trigger points are done, we'll send a request for VPA payment, which would either be a loan or a direct payment. Then once that's done, it'll automatically trigger a supply pay component where we can pay the VPA supplies directly from our marketplace. Once the property's sold, we can send a sold deposit request. And the sold deposit request is there's no daily transfer limit. It's trackable, it comes through our trust accounts. We automatically send the trust receipts, we receipt those funds into our legal trust accounts. Then the trust account manager would work out the settlement process, which is the commission that needs to be paid, disbursements need to be paid, paying contractors directly or directly through the agency accounts, which is then automatically pushed up to Pexar. And once that settles, we send the order of the agents, trust receipts, and pay commission or automatically. Your agency can use one or all six of those services, depending on how they want to integrate with our business, as well as using things like Realtor or real-time agents as well to plug into after this license-settled workflow.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely amazing. The next step for anyone is you don't sign up. There is no subscription. You're paying per transaction.
Pricing Model Guarantee And Closing
SPEAKER_01But you're rightly, there's no monthly subscriptions, there's no credit cards required, no contracts, no minimum use. We've built our business model to align with the real estate industry's business model. So we get paid when settlement occurs. So if there's a listing that the agent picks up and they lose the listing, there's no fees or charges from us. It's all paid for its settlement. We do recommend that agencies give it a try to see the benefits, putting through five or six listings through our platform. We've done enough transactions now into the thousands that we can guarantee every agency that's that starts with us that we'll save them at least two hours. It's probably closer to three, that will save you at least two hours per listing. If we don't, it's a money-back cash guarantee.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So, Lucas, we've heard today from Andy the transformation that's made in there. The industry needs one platform to bring that efficiency and bring it all together. We look forward to hearing the progress in the future. And Lucas, thank you for joining us. Thanks again for having me, Lee. And that concludes another edition of We Are Selling. In your show notes, there is a hyperlink saying send a message to Lee. You can either type one or our new feature is you can record. It could be an objection, something you want fixed, send it through, and I will cover it in the program. Big thank you to all our speakers today, and I look forward to seeing all of you at the Complete Salesperson course one day. Thank you for listening. See you next week.