UK property is increasingly becoming the 'money-laundry' of choice for the world's criminals _(BBC-Panorama-'Following-the-drug-money'-2019)_. Transparency International pinpointed £4.4billion of UK properties bought with laundered funds, a sum it said was "the tip of the iceberg"_(Financial-Times-2019)_. Property provides a safe harbour for fraudsters to integrate large sums of 'dirty money' into the legal economy in a single transaction, fuelling crime throughout the UK and internationally. Consequently, regulators have ramped up oversight and pressure on property professionals (lawyers/estate-agents/mortgage-brokers/mortgage-lenders) leading to slower property transaction times and worsened experiences for professionals and homemovers. The gatekeepers to prevent money-laundering in property are property-lawyers. Money-laundering regulations require them to combat money-laundering by completing detailed and costly checks to confirm homemovers' identities and sources of wealth/funds. These checks are performed manually, which is slow (20-days), costly (£150) and ineffective. Lawyers spend £150 of time collecting ID-documents, bank statements and supportive evidence from homemovers, then assessing them to establish if they are using non-laundered purchase funds. This is very difficult to do smoothly and accurately. With no technological solution, property-lawyers have no alternative other than to throw more manual processes at preventing money-laundering. These processes are ineffective at stopping money-laundering because falsifying any document is easy to do and hard for the untrained eye to detect. Frustratingly for the homemover, manual information gathering cannot be securely shared with others who need it, such as estate-agents, mortgage-brokers and mortgage-lenders, meaning they must have their financial affairs assessed from scratch multiple times. Thirdfort is changing this. After a friend was defrauded out of £25k during a property purchase and having been through painful anti-money-laundering ("AML") checks multiple times, co-founders Jack and Olly set up Thirdfort to streamline identity and AML-checks in UK property. Thirdfort has built a mobile-app to automate ID-checks using electronic verification and will now automate these painful and manual money-laundering checks. Using Open-Banking technology, Thirdfort will enable instant access and analysis of bank statement data. A report is then generated for the property-lawyer to assess and share with estate-agents/mortgage-brokers/mortgage-lenders. Thirdfort will relieve property-professionals of the manual burden of collecting documents and provide a better, more accurate way to identify illegitimate funds. The checks can be done without the need for paper, empowering homemovers to carry out checks via their phone, speeding up property transaction times and reducing legal fees. This frees up lawyers to give better service and provides a robust tool for preventing UK property money-laundering.

Covid-19 has driven the largest increase in the demand for Wills the UK has ever seen ([Law-Society-Gazette-March-20][0]). All demographics are scared about their health, worried for their family's wellbeing and financial security, whilst thinking about the legal and financial ramifications if the worst was to happen. In addition, c.40% of UK over 55 year-olds do not have a Will (Unbiased-2017), largely due to the manual (non-digital) administrative hassle involved. When writing or updating a Will, everyone could benefit from proper legal advice and over 70% (Law-Society-Gazette-2020) of people use a regulated lawyer to help write and execute Wills. UK regulations mean that lawyers must verify a person's ID (to avoid fraudulent claims over assets) before giving advice and a Will must be signed and witnessed by two individuals. These processes typically happen face-to-face with a lawyer, but this is simply not possible during a pandemic, when social distancing and lockdown rules are in place. Worse still, vulnerable individuals who are most at risk and practising shielding are likely to be the most in need of a Will. The UK government has rightly classified Wills lawyers as 'essential workers', however they cannot carry out this essential work. Some Thirdfort client law firms get by via requiring witnessing over garden fences, but with no electronic solution, lawyers are resorting to all kinds of dangerous and cumbersome workarounds. Another Thirdfort client drives to clients with a gazebo to use as a makeshift office to conduct ID-checks and signing/witnessing. If the client lives alone, the lawyer must travel to the client's property with another member of their own household to act as the second witness. If the lawyer lives alone, finding a second Witness becomes even harder. These workarounds are slow, costly and potentially lethal, as it exposes vulnerable clients and essential-workers to Covid-19\. Thirdfort is building a remote ID-checking and E-signing/witnessing mobile-app to allow any individual with a smartphone to write and sign their Will, whilst getting the necessary legal advice. The solution is built on the back of our existing mobile-app which tackles equivalent problems in the property legal market. We will sell the product to Wills-lawyers who will be able to use it in combination with offering legal advice over telephone/video-conference to offer a fully remote Wills service. This new remote offering can then endure post-pandemic, upgrading the archaic, inefficient and potentially insecure way Wills are currently executed. [0]: https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/coronavirus-demand-for-wills-jumps-by-76/5103703.article

"In 2018, property fraud is a £120million problem in the UK, almost 20 times worse than it was in 2015\. It affects all sizes of law firm and property transaction values. Law firms are increasingly having to spend time and resources to fend off cyber-attacks, with the Government's National Cyber Security Centre finding over 80% of law firms were on the receiving end of cyber-attacks in 2018\. We are building an AI driven algorithm that can be used by property lawyers to detect fraudulent property transactions in real time, protecting property buyers, sellers and lawyers. Aside from monetary loss, property fraud is devastating law firms and their reputations. The problem is widespread, fast-growing and an enormous stress for property lawyers -- with over 90% of the 150 property lawyers we've spoken telling us fraud was their number one fear during property transactions. Transaction specific fraud data gathered from law firms such as Mishcon de Reya and others recently hit by fraud will form the training data for our AI algorithm. From this data we can identify the typical characteristics of a fraudulent transaction. For future transactions, our AI will process a range of specific transaction data and compare it to the identified characteristics of fraudulent transactions. Our AI system can then generate a real-time risk score for property lawyers before the fraud is committed. When money is stolen, people are losing life-shattering amounts without recourse. Typical examples of property fraud include a first-time buyer losing their £100,000 deposit via email misdirection; or a property owner who has their identify stolen and their tenanted flat 'hijacked' and sold to an unsuspecting seller. Fraud attempts are costly and painful to prevent or reverse for both property lawyers and consumers. Our AI algorithm will accurately calculate the risk for every transaction, allowing additional checks to be completed where necessary, and giving peace-of-mind to both property lawyers and their clients."