Lloyds Banking Group has partnered with estate agency Connells Group and conveyancing firm LMS to introduce a fully digital homebuying service designed to streamline property transactions across England and Wales.

The UK’s biggest mortgage lender said in a press release that the initiative aims to address long-standing inefficiencies in the homebuying process, which currently takes an average of five months to complete and sees around one in four transactions fall through.

Lloyds’s new service is intended to reduce duplication, improve transparency and accelerate completion times. It offers a shared data exchange platform, which can securely capture property, identity and financial information for use among all involved parties, such as estate agents, lenders and conveyancers.

The bank said this will allow key checks to take place earlier in the transaction, help to minimise delays and reduce uncertainty for buyers and sellers.

Under the new model, Lloyds said sellers will become “digital sale ready” earlier in the process, with property and identity information captured upfront. Source-of-funds checks will also be conducted earlier, while searches can be made available alongside property listings.

Conveyancers will gain immediate access to verified information, reducing manual paperwork and speeding up progression.

The service is initially available for residential transactions involving Connells branches, LMS panel conveyancers and Lloyds Banking Group as lender.

Lloyds said the launch of the new service represents the “first phase” of a wider national network connecting agents, lenders, surveyors and conveyancers through shared standards aligned with the Property Data Trust Framework, with the aim of scaling adoption across the UK property market.

“The process of buying or selling your home is too stressful, too slow, too laborious, and often collapses through no fault of your own,” said Andrew Asaam, homes director at Lloyds Banking Group. “With this new digital service, we aim to cut the stress, increase the speed, reduce the workload for customers and limit the number of transactions that fall through.”

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