Earlier this year, Credas joined forces with Lloyds Banking Group and Connells Group on a proof of concept built around NPTN, the data exchange and orchestration network set up by LMS to bring the home buying industry together on a single customer journey. Travis Scholes, Commercial Director at LMS, recently sat down with Rhian Del-Valle, Director of Enterprise Partnerships at Credas, to talk about why this initiative matters and what it means for consumers, conveyancers and lenders alike.
From right to work to the leading name in property AML
Credas has been part of the NPTN pilot since it began back in 2024. But the company’s roots in property go back further, and by accident.
“We accidentally fell into property back in 2016,” Rhian explained. Credas started out helping a previous holding company run right to work checks for thousands of construction workers, verifying identities, certifications and insurance policies. A proof of concept built for that problem turned out to have much wider applications.
Nearly a decade on, Credas is now the leading provider of AML and identity checks in the UK property and legal sector. A Credas check was used in 60% of all UK house sales last year, and the business has grown fourfold over the last four years.
COVID accelerated all of it. “People had kind of heard of digital ID before COVID,” Rhian said, “and then when COVID happened and we couldn’t travel, it really picked up. Now it’s just expected.”
The real problem isn’t a lack of technology
Despite all that digitalisation, and hundreds of millions of pounds invested across the sector, buying a house in the UK still takes around 16 weeks on average, and in some cases far longer. Cancellation rates sit at roughly 30%, and average completion times have crept up to somewhere between 170 and 180 days.
Rhian’s frustration is less about the tools available and more about how disconnected they are. “We’ve managed to digitalise most things, from property searches to ID verification to risk assessments to e-signature. There’s been a lot of digitalisation. What I found challenging is knitting all of those together.”
That’s the gap NPTN is designed to close. Rather than every organisation improving its own corner of the process in isolation, NPTN connects LMS, Connells, Lloyds, Credas, Armalytix, TM Group, Novus Strategy and others so information can move across the journey instead of being requested again and again.
Verify once: the case for a digital wallet
One of the clearest examples of duplicated effort is identity verification. A single buyer or seller might need to prove who they are up to five times across a transaction: to their agent, their conveyancer, their mortgage broker and their lender.
Credas has spent the last couple of years building a digital wallet to solve exactly this. Once a consumer verifies their identity at the first point of contact, typically with a broker or agent, they can choose to share that verified data with other parties in the chain, rather than starting from scratch each time.
“They own the data, they’re the consumer,” Rhian said. The wallet is consumer consented by design, and Credas already has customers using it. What’s left, she said, is fine-tuning it against the detail of upcoming regulation, particularly the recent MHCLG consultation response on upfront information.
The underlying AML checks stay consistent (identity, liveness, address, and PEPs and sanctions status) but different parties in the chain need different levels of assurance on top. A conveyancer working toward safe harbour standard, for example, needs linking documents to the property and evidence of source of funds. Credas has built its system to “land and expand”: start with a strong foundation, then top up with whatever additional checks a specific stage of the journey requires.
What would conveyancers need to worry about?
Asked what should concern conveyancers about relying on a single, reusable, consumer consented ID check, Rhian was direct: not much. “All of the information that they need and all of the checks that they need to do are absolutely available.” The building block approach means nothing is missing, only added to as needed.
What’s next for Credas
Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) capability is on the roadmap, with a target launch toward the end of this year or in Q1 2027, timed to make sure it matches how the industry and regulation actually shape up. Beyond that, Rhian said the focus for the next 12 months is less about building new products and more about refining what already exists, so it keeps pace with a regulatory picture that continues to shift, from the Digital Identity Trust Framework to right to rent legislation to Companies House director checks.
A shared goal, not a competitive one
What stands out most in the conversation is the shared motivation behind NPTN. As Rhian put it, the driving force isn’t commercial advantage, it’s better outcomes for the people going through one of the most stressful experiences of their lives.
Asked what could still get in the way of real industry change, Rhian pointed to two things: legislation that isn’t specific enough about what evidence and checks are actually required, and the challenge of getting an industry built on traditional institutions, from centuries-old law firms to long-established lenders, to adopt new ways of working with confidence.
Her message to the wider industry was simple. “There’s enough room for everyone in the industry. Let’s put egos aside. Whatever your system, whatever your role is in this, everyone can be the best in class at what they do, and when you knit it all together, it can be wonderful. For me it’s all consumer led.”
Watch the full conversation between Rhian Del-Valle and Travis Scholes here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2nN8_SdS_o
