A digital platform designed to reduce delays and duplication in the homebuying process has won the Department for Business and Trade’s Smart Data Challenge Prize, as the government steps up efforts to stimulate innovation in consumer data-sharing.
Moverly’s prototype Digital Sale Ready Pack was awarded the £50,000 top prize after eight months of development in a bespoke “smart data sandbox”, created to simulate a year’s worth of data from a metropolitan area.
The initiative forms part of the government’s wider push to roll out Smart Data schemes that allow consumers and businesses to access and share data securely with accredited third parties.
The platform collates property information that is currently gathered piecemeal across multiple stages of a transaction – including title documents, EPCs, searches, utilities data and council tax information – into a single verified dataset that can be used by sellers, buyers, conveyancers, surveyors and lenders.
CUT TRANSACTION TIMES
Moverly argues that consolidating this information upfront enables issues to be addressed earlier in the process and reduces the need for repeated requests and verification.
The company estimates that widespread adoption could cut average transaction times from 22 weeks to under 12 and reduce fall-through rates from more than 25% to below 10%.
It also projects direct household savings of £1,000–£2,000 per move, with potential market-wide efficiency gains of up to £3 billion a year.
FALL THROUGHS
Ed Molyneux, Moverly’s founder and CTO, says: “Finding a home and making a new life in it should be one of the most positive experiences, instead it is fraught with stress and uncertainty, and if a transaction falls through it can be heartbreaking. Why should anyone settle for this?
“In the UK it takes an average of 22 weeks to complete a transaction, and more than one in four sales collapse – often very late in the process. Each failure leaves buyers and sellers with legal fees, survey costs, and wasted time.
“The financial loss to consumers runs into billions each year. It reduces mobility, adds friction to the housing market, and undermines consumer confidence in one of life’s most important milestones.”
DIGITAL SALE READY PACKS
He adds: “We address these challenges by reframing the transaction around trusted, reusable data.
“Instead of information being repeatedly requested, re-keyed, and re-verified, Digital Sale Ready Packs provide a single, trusted source of truth built on Smart Data principles.
“Each pack contains verified property data that can be confidently reused by buyers, sellers, agents, conveyancers, surveyors, and lenders. This enables once-only data capture and transparent sharing between participants.”
REAL WORLD BENEFITS
Baroness Lloyd of Effra, Minister for the Digital Economy, says: “Cutting edge ideas and innovation is central to this prize and I congratulate Moverly and all the teams that competed this year on their projects.
“We want to harness the power of smart data so it can have real world benefits for consumers but also help cut red tape and boost the economy, and that’s why this prize is so important.”
Two runners-up received £25,000 each. Nigel, created by Beyond Encryption, provides a secure dashboard that consolidates household information spanning insurance, pensions, banking, motoring and utilities.
The second runner-up, Open Transport, integrates Open Banking data, government CO₂ datasets and transport accounts to give users a consolidated view of their travel activity across modes.
