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Conveyancing 2015 Review

The recently concluded GhostConvey road show to eight of South Africa's major centres was a resounding success. The theme of the road show was Conveyancing 2015 - the market, the players, the technology and the event sought to offer insights and information to today's property industry specialists, by focusing on the future conveyancing horizon. This meant bringing together experts from Korbitec and from the business sector as a whole to discuss not only the specifics of the current market, but also what might be in store over the next four years; from technology developments to evolving market dynamics.

Conveyancing 2015 visited Cape Town, Bloemfontein Port Elizabeth, East London, Durban, Jo'burg, Pretoria and Nelspruit over a two week period - a journey that amounted to 12 separate events. Attendees ranged from conveyancers from many of the country's leading practices to attorney liaison officers from the country's major financial institutions and to key members of the Deeds Offices and Chief Registrar's office.
The event was very clearly enjoyed by everyone who attended. The feedback was uniformly positive, with attendees enjoying the presentations and the opportunity to share information and views with industry colleagues.

Korbitec CEO Dawie Verryne shed particularly interesting light on broad market dynamics in his presentation on Naspers' understanding of Africa's looming Internet revolution. Within the context of a series of high bandwidth cables set to come online across the continent over the next three years, Dawie elaborated on Naspers' view that Africa is only in the early stage of a major Internet revolution - one that will involve falling bandwidth prices, much improved line quality and - as a result of rapidly emerging uncapped bandwidth offerings - significantly changed user behaviour from consumers and businesses.

Mari Van Wyk, GhostConvey General Manager, explored the operational and technical detail of the conveyencing sector, and also presented key results from the recently released Cost Recovery Market Survey. In addition, she addressed a subject of primary interest to all attendees: fully integrated Electronic Transfer Instructions (ETI) across the property supply chain. For some, this was a peek into the future of conveyancing information flow, for others a subject of immediate practical interest.

"It was a great series of events, on many different levels," says Van Wyk. "It's always important for colleagues to gather and share thoughts and information around their work, which everyone really enjoyed. Equally, representatives from all sectors enjoyed the future horizon view a lot. The presentation on full ETI Integration between real estate agencies, attorney practices and financial institutions was very important for many people, especially in the context of Dawie Verryne's presentation on the African Internet Revolution, and Steuart Pennington's analysis of our country's socio economic progression since 1994."

Steuart Pennington is strategy consultant with a B.A. (Honours) degree from Rhodes University, a PDM from Wits and a Certificate in Management from Oxford University. He is also the force behind SA The Good News. Speaking in both capacities, he offered a fascinating high level analysis of the local property sector and the manner in which South Africa's transformation journey is impacting on property values and the industry as a whole.

Each event wrapped up with an excited set of attendees possessed with a sharper strategic and technical understanding of their work.

"That was really the point," adds Van Wyk. "Our industry is evolving very fast, there are technical developments occurring all the time and the context in which we operate is fluid. I think the big success of the events was their ability to give everyone a bit of breathing space to look into the future and to start to envision - in a very practical way - how they are going to harness the opportunities that exist. We will certainly be doing it again next year!"

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