How PEXA balances tech to benefit teams and the digital journey

As a B2B organization, PEXA may not be very well known by the public, working with banking, conveyancers, and government, but it’s been quietly professionalizing property transaction markets in Australia for about 14 years. It was established to solve the problem of how to digitalize conveyancing, or transferring property titles, with financial settlements at the center. It sounds reasonably simple, yet it’s not without complexities. However, having over 90% of any property transaction settled in Australia on the PEXA platform in 2024 is it’s own success story, and integral to that is the company group CTO Eglantine Etiemble. “We’re now growing this value proposition in EU data products and in the UK, too,” she says. “So while it’s an ASX listed organization, it’s still reasonably small with about 1,200 people across Australia and UK right now, and technology is probably a bit more than a third of that.”

With a background in business and finance, it wasn’t until later in her career that Etiemble fully appreciated the power of technology as an enabler and a means to bring people together. “In my current role as a technology leader in a technology organization, I have this component of community impact and using innovation for good,” she says, which includes looking to scale AI not only to empower employees, but to use it as a guide to source talent who can master such emerging tech. “Our team must self-actualize, but we want to make sure they’re empowered to drive the array of initiatives we see across the group,” she adds.

On the flipside, however, is the need to balance implementing new technology and maintaining legacy infrastructure since going too much one way or the other can impede progress, or worse. “It’s a challenge for us,” she says. “We’re not trying to rebuild it all, but what we try to do when we build something new is to do it for reuse. We have an array of platforms we work in, so when we look at a payment system or an identification system, we make sure it’s going to be reused across the companies we have on different platforms so we don’t have to rebuild from scratch. We just make sure we take a modular approach that’s reusable throughout our organization.” Innovation drives this approach, of course, but it takes a lot of oversight and a good prioritization process to manage the whole system. “We’re very value-driven,” she says. “We have a very balanced approach when it comes to innovation.”

O’Sullivan spoke with Etiemble about data privacy, the value of a diverse workforce, and keeping competition in check in a fast-moving industry. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On the digital conveyance journey: The ambition of the Australian Government was to digitize this complex process across the country into a single solution. We’re almost there with six trade jurisdictions out of eight, and over 90% will be transacting through PEXA. We’ve probably supported over AUD$3 trillion in transactions across our platform and 16 million property settlements in Australia. It’s a big impact on the market. And that translates into very different experiences for users of our platform. We’ve seen a lot of diversity of people who leverage our tool, and they don’t have to come physically into Land Registry to settle; they can just do this from home. So that allows a lot of people to continue to work with our platform. In terms of digitalization, we’ve been doing a lot of work on data. Because of the complexity and diversification, it was critical to effectively manage the data to support these new sophisticated products. It’s something we’ve been improving over the past couple of years.

On aligning IT initiatives: We’re still a reasonably small organization. In much larger ones, you need to rely more on processes. The first thing is the executive team works closely together. We spend a lot of time assessing market opportunities and challenges ahead. So our strategy is a collective one, where we’re building strategic initiatives together with a prioritization process in place throughout the year, which allows us to be more agile in how we respond to market changes. That process or initiative gets across the whole organization, and we review it every month with the CEO of Australia, UK, and heads of different functions, and we’ll be able to readjust what we’re doing. So in the end, 99% of what we’re doing are technology initiatives. The portfolio is a tech portfolio, but it’s a group portfolio. It’s something we keep alive and refreshed together. It keeps us honest and it drives transparency, too.

On emerging technologies: We’re a tech business in a property market, so innovation and understanding how technology can change the game is absolutely critical for us. Innovation is one of our core values that’s embedded in our reward and evaluation systems. Everybody knows what’s expected in that space. It’s an important foundation. The exchange platform of our business is regulated and is now critical infrastructure of Australia, so we’re trying to rebuild a lot of attention to where we innovate, or areas where we don’t have confidential data. Therefore, when we think about our pilots and innovation methods, we look at the non-regulated, less risky area of the business. In third parties, we also take a very holistic approach, and that was true for cloud, and very true for AI. About six years ago, when we were one of the first companies in Australia to move into the cloud, it wasn’t just about the migration. It was about ongoing training, reskilling, and certification, and we’re now taking a very holistic approach to AI, but never compromising on data privacy, cybersecurity, or resilience.

On thriving teams: Something we do well at PEXA is make a connection to purpose and strategy, and the tech side connects people to places. We’ve made tremendous progress in that space in Australia and now in the UK. It’s about getting the team to understand what that means for customers, the impact you’re having on the markets, and the impact when things are down. Getting close to that purpose and making sure we keep it aligned and close to the strategy is essential, as well as understanding how one’s work contributes to the group scorecard and group impact. This is something we talk about all the time in different teams, and we cascade that visibility. Also, we’ve been investing a lot in career pathways and self actualization to make sure our team continues to learn and evolve. Diversity and inclusion is also important to ensure that independent of your background, we can get the best out of you, and you can be yourself in the organization. I think people dramatically underestimate the impact of not having an inclusive organization.

On developing future talent: Technology is absolutely critical. You need to know your area, but also your business in great detail. Spend time with the customer center, in the store, in the aisle. Deep dive into your business and understand its potential, opportunities, pain points, and the realities of the employee. It’s always a competitive advantage in technology to do that. And don’t always ask for permission. There are always pockets of innovation, and you can always test things. It’s much easier to demonstrate the value of something if you’ve been able to make it happen in real life. An inclusive team is also critical. Too often we have teams that are very similar in IT, and the problem there is you have a team that doesn’t fully understand all aspects of the business nor relate to different aspects of the team itself. If you have a team that’s able to do that, you can demonstrate it’s really going to reflect positively on your potential as a broader leader.