The Intermediary – November 2025 - Flipbook - Page 44
The Interview.
NatWest
The context for change
Jessica Bird speaks with Nadine
Edwards, head of intermediary
distribution at NatWest, about how
the bank’s work with PEXA heralds
change for the mortgage market
n July 2025, NatWest formally entered
into a partnership with PEXA, and
in doing so, became the first major
UK bank to commit to implementing
the Australian firm’s digital property
transaction platform. The collaboration
aims to digitise, streamline and
revolutionise, first remortgages, and
later the entire sale and purchase process,
replacing traditional, paper-based conveyancing
with secure, real-time data exchange between
lenders, conveyancers and legal teams.
NatWest plans to begin live remortgage
transactions through PEXA in the first half
of 2026, with full rollout to purchase cases
expected to follow in quick succession.
The deal marks a significant step in
modernising the UK property market,
aligning it more closely with the fully digital
settlement model already used in Australia. The
Intermediary caught up with Nadine Edwards,
head of intermediary distribution at NatWest,
on what this means for the market as a whole.
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The Intermediary | November 2025
Edwards has spent more than 16 years in this
market, with experience across brokerage and
lenders, joining NatWest four years ago, and
taking over her current role at the beginning of
2025. For Edwards, her history as a broker has
had a particularly profound effect, helping her
“always remember there’s a customer at the end
of all this.”
The market’s evolution – and particularly
its relationship with technology – has been
increasingly pronounced since the onset of
Covid-19, which Edwards says has created a
“constant cycle of change.”
She continues: “We’ve had to react to change
really quickly, and we’ve become particularly
resilient. Covid-19 changed how people
work, customer profiles, and of course the
macroeconomic and economic changes – from
‘Trussonomics’ and the base rate, to interest
rates going up for the first time in years.”
Culturally, this led to greater collaboration
and agility across the mortgage market,
Edwards adds: “As an industry as a whole, we’re
very collaborative, and we’re also particularly
resilient and able to change – probably much
quicker than we ever have done historically.”
Of course, across the full spectrum of UK
businesses, the pandemic and lockdowns also
had a profound effect on the use, adoption and
development of technology.
Nevertheless, while processes were
streamlined across every sector, homebuying
in the UK remains “one of the most stressful
things anybody has been through.”
Edwards explains: “Research shows that 81%
of purchase customers face issues with the
process, and 43% of those just looking to do a
remortgage on a property they own.”
It does not have to be this way, however.
Edwards points to the Australian market,
where the average mortgage process is digitally
enabled, and takes two weeks – compared to an
average of five to nine weeks here. This is, to say
the least, a sign of “inefficiency in the UK system.”
Starting with the remortgage process, the
partnership with PEXA aims to “tackle the
issues head on,” enabling better data sharing
and communication, including between
previous sources of bottlenecks, such as the
