Blog by Kevin Stewart, Digital Uptake for DDS
We’ve reached a major milestone for our Digital Discharge Service (DDS), as we welcomed Lloyds Banking Group to the service. In terms of standard security discharges, Lloyds processes the largest volume of applications in Scotland, so bringing them onto DDS will bring major benefits across the industry.
Lloyds have been an important stakeholder for years, and they’ve now made the move from our existing services to DDS, and the benefits are already evident. DDS offers a faster, more secure and more efficient mortgage discharge service that’s not just fully digital, but more intuitive and user-friendly as well.
The team at Lloyds discovered these improvements for themselves during their initial trial of DDS, working alongside our dedicated team. For example, while walking them through the service, I timed how long it took them to complete a discharge. The final time came to two minutes – half the time the corresponding process using earlier services.
With the trial complete, Lloyds are now processing live transactions through DDS across a number of their business areas, including their Bank of Scotland and Halifax operations. As part of the setup, they’ve been provided with a number of new smart cards, which allow them to securely sign each discharge electronically. This will make a significant difference on the time it takes them to sign off discharges across their operations.
These developments are something that the team at Lloyds have enthusiastically welcomed. As Jayne Royle, Project Manager for Business Change at Lloyds commented, “the move to DDS has been a smooth and easy process, thanks to Kevin and the team at RoS. We process tens of thousands of discharge applications each year, so DDS holds substantial benefits for our organisation. At the individual level, DDS makes the work of our mortgage specialists far easier, as they’re using the latest digital services, and no longer handling large numbers of paper application documents”.
Solicitors have also welcomed Lloyds to DDS. Fiona Wildgoose at Aberdein Considine told me that “as we work on mortgage discharges with Lloyds on a regular basis, having them signed up to DDS means we’ll be able to bring the time-saving efficiency benefits of this service to a much wider range of our clients”.
Bringing Lloyds on board has been great news for us here at RoS too. I spoke to Stef Brown, our Head of Business Development, and she called Lloyds’ addition “a significant step forward” for the service, adding “DDS is an important development for the industry as a whole, so to welcome a major firm like Lloyds is fantastic news, as we work towards making DDS the standard service for discharging standard securities”.
Signing up for DDS fast and simple – visit the DDS page of our website to find out more.