Updated Misinformation Statement: Sympli and InfoTrack continue to spread misinformation
By PEXA Group - 3 February 2026
In the wake of the release of the eConveyancing regulator ARNECC’s independent reports, which noted serious challenges with the interoperability program, Sympli and InfoTrack (the co-owner of Sympli with the ASX) have made misleading statements, seeking to exploit the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) recent technical incident to spread misinformation and mischaracterise the outage as a competition issue in the eConveyancing industry. (See misinformation table below.)
On Tuesday 27 January 2026, the Reserve Bank of Australia experienced a technology outage. This disruption was caused by a technical incident at the RBA (RBA statement).
The RBA provides the payment infrastructure that allows funds to move between banks to facilitate property settlements. If the RBA’s payment systems are unavailable, financial property settlements can’t complete. There is no logical relationship between an outage in the RBA’s payments system and the case for competition in eConveyancing.
PEXA’s platform remained fully operational, without issues, throughout the incident, on the day executing nearly 2,000 non-financial transactions that did not require RBA clearing. By 10:45pm, close to 5,000 financial settlements completed successfully once the RBA issue was resolved. Operations returned to normal on Wednesday.
We acknowledge the genuine frustration and inconvenience this incident caused across the ecosystem, particularly for practitioners helping their clients buy and sell their properties. However, disruption caused by an RBA outage is not a competition issue.
Attempts to link this incident to eConveyancing competition policy are misleading. The impact to customers of the RBA outage would have been the same no matter how many Electronic Lodgement Networks there were and whether they were interoperable.
The reports (ARNECC reports) found no compelling case for continuing the interoperability program and concluded:
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“…where there are major system changes, functional equivalence broadly defined will not be possible for any model. Changes will break things. Participants in an IOP transaction will likely have a loss of some functionality, at least compared to a transaction taking place today.”;₁
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Sympli’s “practitioner first” model has a low likelihood of meeting the desired outcomes;₂ and
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with respect to interoperability, “(even if) … direct connect can be achieved within the timelines assumed for this analysis, there is a risk that the ability for it to deliver competitive outcomes in the long-term may not be achievable due to the time and costs involved.”₃
The reports also warned that interoperability could degrade service levels, and according to the banks who use the system, result in up to 10% of all settlements failing, or up to 120,000 each year.
Sympli and InfoTrack’s assertions that the RBA incident demonstrates a lack of ELNO platform redundancy are incorrect. PEXA’s platform functioned as designed at the time of the RBA incident. The issue occurred at the central bank clearing layer, outside PEXA’s platform, and therefore did not require PEXA to activate redundancy measures.
With a consistently high customer satisfaction rating of around 90 percent, Australia’s eConveyancing system is widely recognised internationally as a benchmark₄ for reliability, security and efficiency.
“Undoubtedly, the PEXA platform has been an outstanding success… the efficiency of the new system is staggeringly efficient – and has facilitated the opportunity for substantial savings in professional fees. A PEXA fee of just $140.58 for each party can hardly be described as being a monopolistic rort. (Conveyancing customer)”₅
Maintaining confidence in that system requires an accurate and responsible representation of incidents and proper distinction between operational events and policy considerations.
₁Functional Requirements Review, Page 8
₂Functional Requirements Review, Page 18, Model 3 Flexibility once completed, (Least) Regulatory Complexity; (High) – Likelihood of meeting desired outcome (Worst)
₃Cost Benefit Analysis, Page 3.
₄“Are there any barriers, on the Government side at least, to… [the] system becoming as efficient in the UK as it is in Australia?” Chris Curtis, MP for Milton Keynes North (Session on ₄Affordability of Home Ownership in the UK transcript
₅Submission to the Inquiry into Competition Reports in Electronic Conveyancing, Mr Paul Denny, 5 August 2025, https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/92064/0001%20Paul%20Denny.pdf.
Further information:
PEXA Media release – ARNECC reports
PEXA drives billions of dollars of efficiency gains to Australian economy – new report
Contact:
James Aanensen – Senior Corporate Affairs Manager
M: 0410 518 590
E: james.aanensen@pexa.com.au
Recent Misinformation Claims made by representatives of Sympli and InfoTrack.
| Date (click to link to claim) | FALSE CLAIM | CORRECT FACT |
| 30/01/26 |
“It is also clear that PEXA’s claim of standing up their system in no more than 4 hours of an outage is bogus.”
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PEXA’s platform was operational and did not require PEXA to activate redundancy measures. Testing conducted in late-2025 demonstrated that in the unlikely event of a major disruption originating on PEXA’s Australian Exchange – such as an adverse effect from a software deployment, or a cyber incident – redundancy time would be less than four hours, including data and platform recovery. |
| 30/1/26 | The only solution here is competition. | The two issues are unrelated. The RBA is a Government central bank, and its performance is independent of regulated competition models. Regulated competition measures would not have avoided the issues experienced by the RBA on Tuesday. |
| 9/12/2025 | PEXA is a mandated monopoly. | There is no law or regulation mandating PEXA as a monopoly. There are various requirements that mandate the use of eConveyancing. |
| 9/12/2025 |
“IP protections – claiming that somehow integration with another ELNO would expose their intellectual property. This is untrue.” “Functional equivalence, claiming that interoperability would reduce PEXA’s functionality or end user experience. Also, not true.” |
The FRR confirms PEXA’s substantial intellectual property claims and the need for them to be fully accommodated in any interoperability design.
“In the short term, due to PEXA’s intellectual property claims, in an IOP transaction some current features provided by PEXA to FIs likely will be impacted.” (Functional Requirements Review, page 10) |
| 9/12/2025 | “Claiming the two networks would be less secure than the single monopoly network we have today. Also, untrue.” |
Interoperability necessarily introduces additional points of dependency in a network, meaning there are more points of vulnerability. Cyber security expert, Cyber CX, found that cyber risks, and the ability to control them, would be significantly weaker under an interoperability model. Furthermore, if there are multiple ELNOs in a transaction and there is an issue with one of the ELNOs, the entire transaction will not progress. This increases the probability of disruption compared with the current model, where any failures are isolated to the party experiencing the incidents. |
| 9/12/2025 | “Fee parity, claiming that practitioner and bank fees are equal. False. You know in the same workspaces your clients pay more than the banks.” |
All PEXA customers pay the same fee for the same service (or document). There are no discounts or hidden benefits between small or larger customer; whether metro or regional. Different services (for example, a transfer vs a mortgage) do attract different fees, so prices only differ depending on what is involved with any given transaction – just like in the paper world. Sympli adopts the exact same fee structure. |
| 9/12/2025 | “Competition means fair pricing, innovation and better outcomes for practitioners and clients.” | The eConveyancing regulatory framework, including pricing controls and performance standards, protect customers and consumers. PEXA is a company built on innovation – however, forcing PEXA to provide a competitor its valuable IP is a significant disincentive to innovation and will cause eConveyancing innovation to stagnate. |
| 23/12/2025 | “The entire industry has been mandated to use PEXA.” | Electronic conveyancing has been mandated in some jurisdictions, but no ELNO is specifically mandated. |
| 5/11/2025 | “PEXA have a long history of using IP claims as a delay tactic.” | “In the short term, due to PEXA’s intellectual property claims, in an IOP transaction some current features provided by PEXA to FIs likely will be impacted.” (Functional Requirements Review, page 10) |
| 5/11/2025 | “Interoperability will deliver customer choice, lower prices, better service, greater innovation and more reliability.” |
The ARNECC Reports show that interoperability would reduce innovation, and surface area risk, and do not guarantee competition: “Functional equivalence across all non-core Settlement and Lodgement functions is not achievable without a level of standardisation that removes the opportunities for innovation and competition.” (Functional Requirements Review, page 7) Interoperability comes “at the cost of increased coordination complexity and a larger security surface area from proliferated connections.” (Cost Benefit Analysis, page 48). There must be an “acceptance of a degradation in practitioner experience and short-term impact on On-Day/Time Settlement metrics” (Functional Requirements Review, page 7) |
Previous misinformation claims from July 2025 PEXA statement:
| Date (click to link to claim) | Misinformation claims on social media |
Facts – setting the record straight |
| “How can we rely on a single, mostly unregulated and private, entity to handle all settlements?” | PEXA is one of the most regulated parts of the property supply chain, with national price and service level requirements. | |
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“A concerning incident on Thursday with login issues on the PEXA system across Australia and trust accounts seemingly overdrawn.” |
There is no evidence that any accounts were overdrawn. | |
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“It is reported that PEXA’s platform continues to experience regular outages, with six more during April and May, including a ‘login issue’ that lasted more than two hours. ” |
Of the 9 total significant service disruptions recorded in April and May 2025, only 3 were attributed to PEXA. | |
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“It is reported that PEXA’s platform continues to experience regular outages, with six more during April and May, including a ‘login issue’ that lasted more than two hours. ” |
Of the 9 total significant service disruptions recorded in April and May 2025, only 3 were attributed to PEXA. | |
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“This is not only a tech failure but will impact families who are waiting for their properties to settle so they can move into their homes.” |
Everyone who rescheduled settlement for later the same day was able to settle. | |
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“Another PEXA outage today impacting financial settlement with a major bank.” |
This was not a PEXA outage. The root cause originated from a bank’s system and was out of PEXA’s control. PEXA worked with the bank to promptly resolve and keep customers updated. | |
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“There is a PEXA monopoly single point of failure which experienced more than 95 outages in 2024.” |
Source of incidents recorded in 2024, attributed to: 52 – Financial Institutions |
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“Another PEXA outage” |
This was an issue on the side of a Land Registry and not a PEXA outage. When we alerted the Land Registry of the issue, it implemented a fix quickly. |