Industry and Government Support CFIT Coalition’s Next Phase to Advance the Digital Future of Homebuying

London, 29 October 2026 – The Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology (CFIT) has today announced the next phase of its Open Property Coalition, bringing together organisations from across the homebuying ecosystem to accelerate progress towards a more digital, connected and efficient property market.

Following the publication of CFIT’s Open Property Roadmap earlier this year, and amid growing momentum behind government and industry efforts to modernise the homebuying process, the Coalition is moving from developing recommendations to testing practical approaches that could support wider adoption.

Over the coming months, Coalition members will work together to develop and test real-world use cases, explore how existing standards and systems can work together, and identify the practical requirements for wider adoption across a more trusted and interoperable property ecosystem. The evidence generated will help inform the wider work of government, the Digital Property Market Steering Group (DPMSG) and industry.

The programme brings together expertise from across the entire homebuying chain, including major mortgage lenders, property technology providers, conveyancers, estate agents, government departments, regulators, standards bodies and industry representative organisations.

Participants include the Conveyancing Information Executive (CIE), Connells Group, Council of Property Search Organisations (COPSO), Groundsure, HSBC UK, Lloyds Banking Group, LMS, NatWest, OneID, PEXA, TM Group, and many others. The Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, HM Land Registry and the Digital Property Market Steering group will be listening to the views of all those participating in its development and actively monitoring progress.

Together, the Coalition represents an unprecedented breadth of expertise across financial services, property, legal services, government and digital infrastructure – reflecting a shared recognition that no single organisation can modernise the homebuying process alone.

The Coalition was established to address long-standing inefficiencies within the UK property transaction process, where fragmented information, repeated verification and disconnected systems continue to contribute to delays, unnecessary costs and high levels of transaction failure.

Supporting Wider Government and Industry Reform

CFIT’s work forms part of a wider, increasingly aligned effort across government and industry to modernise the homebuying and selling process. At the heart of this is a shared objective: creating the trusted, interoperable infrastructure that allows property information to be shared securely and reused across the transaction journey.

The Coalition will work alongside DPMSG, with the two playing distinct but complementary roles. DPMSG coordinates the sector’s contribution to the digital elements of the government’s Home Buying and Selling Reform programme, including strategic direction, standards and governance. CFIT provides a neutral, time-limited environment for cross-sector testing, exploring how existing approaches can work together and generating practical evidence to inform wider industry and government decisions.

Through this Coalition, CFIT will provide an independent, evidence-led environment in which different approaches to interoperability, trust and governance can be tested through real-world use cases. This will include examining how existing standards can work together, what minimum requirements are needed for organisations to rely on shared data, and what practical barriers need to be addressed to support wider adoption. The evidence generated will help inform the work of DPMSG and government as they consider the long-term framework for the market.

The Coalition will build on existing work across the market, including the DPMSG-sponsored Smart Property Data Trust Framework Sandbox, the Smart Data Guidebook and established industry standards and infrastructure. Rather than creating parallel frameworks, CFIT will focus on testing how these existing approaches can support trusted data sharing across the homebuying journey, identifying practical barriers to interoperability and establishing what is needed to support implementation across the market.

From Roadmap to Delivery

During the Coalition’s first phase, members developed a roadmap setting out how Smart Data principles could underpin a more trusted, secure and consumer-centric homebuying journey. With the government’s recent Home Buying and Selling Reform response signalling clear alignment of this direction of travel, attention is now turning towards implementation.

Rather than simply recommending change, Phase 2 will focus on testing what works in practice and building the evidence needed to support wider implementation.

Coalition members will explore and test Digital Property ID and wider Smart Data-enabled use cases, assess how existing standards and trust arrangements can support interoperability, and develop a prototype to examine practical barriers to adoption. Alongside this, the Coalition will examine the practical requirements and potential barriers to wider industry adoption, helping to identify how tested solutions could be implemented sustainably across the market.

The programme is being delivered through three interconnected workstreams:

• Trust, Legal & Policy (TLP) will examine how existing standards, trust arrangements and governance approaches can support secure data sharing, generating evidence on interoperability, liability and assurance to inform future industry and government decisions.
• Product & Service Design (PSD) will develop and test an MVP using priority Digital Property ID use cases, exploring how existing standards and approaches can work together in practice and identifying barriers to interoperability.
• Commercial Sustainability & Incentives (CSI) will examine the practical requirements for wider industry adoption, identifying potential barriers to implementation and generating evidence on how tested approaches could be applied sustainably across the property ecosystem.

By bringing together organisations responsible for every stage of the property transaction, the Coalition aims to accelerate industry consensus and ensure solutions can be implemented at scale.

Anna Wallace, CEO of CFIT, said:

“The breadth of industry support for the next phase of CFIT’s Open Property Coalition is a significant step forward. Today’s announcement reflects growing alignment between industry, government and the Digital Property Market Steering Group on what needs to change, and we now have a real opportunity to turn our ambition to create a digital and more efficient homebuying process into reality.”

Travis Scholes, Commercial Director at LMS, said:

“The foundations for a more connected homebuying process are already being established across the market. The opportunity now is to connect the organisations, expertise and infrastructure needed to drive adoption at scale. The challenge is no longer proving what is possible, but creating the alignment needed to make it the norm. By bringing together stakeholders from across the ecosystem, this Coalition provides a practical route to turning policy ambition into real-world outcomes.”

Brad Fordham, Head of Mortgage Distribution & Underwriting at NatWest, said:

“Buying a home is one of the biggest financial decisions our customers make, but securing a mortgage is only one part of a much wider and often complex journey. Lenders rely on trusted information from across the property ecosystem, so there is a significant opportunity to use Smart Data and digital technology to make that information easier to verify and share securely. Open Property brings together the organisations needed to explore how that can work across the whole transaction, rather than improving individual stages in isolation. By testing these approaches in practice, we can help build the evidence and confidence needed to create a simpler, more transparent homebuying experience for customers.”

The programme builds on increasing momentum behind digital homebuying reform, following the government’s recent response to its Home Buying and Selling Reform consultation and recommendations from the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, both of which align closely with many of the principles developed through CFIT’s Open Property Roadmap.

By working collaboratively with industry and government, the Coalition will test practical approaches to trusted data sharing and interoperability, generating evidence to inform the development and adoption of solutions across the property market.

As government progresses its homebuying and selling reforms, CFIT’s Coalition will provide a complementary, time-limited testing environment, helping industry demonstrate what works in practice and feeding evidence and market insight into the wider programme coordinated through DPMSG.