Q: What is the value proposition of Unlatch?
Fanny Langevin: The lack of digitisation and the large number of stakeholders make collaboration on the management of a real estate program complex, insecure and inefficient. Therefore, in order to address this problem, Unlatch has developed a collaborative workspace between stakeholders and automated the new homes buying process to make the process seamless, simple, secured and fast.
This is done from the initial enquiry through the management of the stock and documents then across the entire sales process, including automated drafting documents. In other words, Unlatch helps accelerate the productivity, save hours of work each year and improve the relationship with the customers from the very first lead up to the delivery of their property.
Q: What is your USP?
Fanny Langevin: Our Contract Automation Technology (CAT) automates the drafting of even the most complex documents. Also, our sales progression milestones, automated tasks, and progression tools push our clients to act, stay organised and maintain full control of their reservations and sales teams, both internal and external.
Thanks to our unique access management system, our clients can dictate user rights, choose who can view and perform different tasks on the platform to best suit how you work. That is done through our authorized electronic signature through Docusign and the “itsme” application for the authentication.
Q: What is an electronic signature and is it legal, bindings and regulated ?
Fanny Langevin: The manual processes of signing contracts on paper reduce the productivity of employees, delay the business results and create legal and compliance risks. It also involves printing, scanning and re-keying data, and therefore additional costs. However, with the electronic signature, these burdens are removed.
The electronic signature we propose on Unlatch is legal and binding. It respects current regulation on electronic signature. For instance, Docusign electronic signature provides the eIDAS certification, while itsme provides a qualified electronic signature (QES) with the verification of the ID.
The Docusign electronic signature is seamlessly integrated to itsme Sign for a simple, secure and fast signature.
Q: Can you tell me more about the two different segments of your products (Promoteur Immobilier & Commercialisateur)
Fanny Langevin: Our clients are mainly Real Estate Developers. However, we also offer services to independent estate agents if they have exclusive selling rights for a real estate program. Thanks to our unique access management system we can dictate specific user rights to Real Estate Developers and Estate Agents on one or more real estate programs.
When Estate Agents are users of the Real Estate Developers’ platform they can access all or part of the available stock and all related documents in real time. They can draft the reservation form in a minute on the platform and have buyers sign it electronically directly through the integration of Docusign and Itsme for the authentication.
Once the purchaser has signed this first document it goes back to the real estate developer who takes over the reservation with the sale agreement and the follow-up.
Q: How do you see the development of the industry compared to the 2020 & 2021.
Fanny Langevin: The crisis has accentuated the difficulty for real estate developers to obtain their building permits. The administrative course of permit applications found itself more rigid than usual, for example: public inquiries were suspended, absenteeism in regional and communal urban services, and even more so in Brussels where the duration of obtaining a permit is already 5 years.
Based on the last 2 years, this has allowed the real estate sector to learn lessons such as remote work for example. It has accelerated the growth of PropTech and increased the innovation maturity of large groups, but also accompanied the passage to the digital of a whole series of smaller players in all segments.
Q: What is the future vision of Unlatch (Geographical expansion & product expansion).
Fanny Langevin: As part of its July 2021 fundraising round with AXA Venture Partners of €5.2 million, Unlatch wants to accelerate its development.
Based in Paris, Unlatch, established itself in mainland Europe as the leading digital transaction platform for real estate developers and their agents. We also launched the solution in Spain, Portugal, Benelux and more recently in the UK.
More over, activity in 2022 should be driven by the commercial penetration of recently opened markets, as well as by growth in France throughout the development of new features. To consolidate its commercial and technological lead, Unlatch continues to develop new features in collaboration with their clients as a prospect portal, online appointment meeting, statistics and analysis tools for reporting and tracking.
Unlatch has proven the value of our solution in different countries and its ability to replicate the solution to accommodate local laws. The objective is to expand the team in Belgium in 2022 and to continue developing in other countries in Europe and international markets.
Project Manager