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The founder of start-up app Smart Move, industry veteran Kevin Lee, says his new app could shake up how broker customers and others change their address details when they move.
Recently launched to early-stage investors, the app is designed to make the process of updating address details with service providers less painful for customers of service providers such as banks.
Customers using the app will be able to avoid making calls to call centres or filling out online forms with a long list of service providers – instead they just need to push a single request to multiple providers via the app.
The onus will be on those service providers – who will pay to use the app – to ensure customer details are updated and confirm with customers their change of address has been executed.
Designed to be free for consumers, the team behind Smart Move estimates it could shave 80% off what providers spend dealing with address changes, while saving time and hassle for consumers.
The app is being worked on by an 11-strong team including Smart Move CEO Phillip Dance.
Lee, the former owner of Smart Property Adviser and a former Smartline franchisee, said he had ‘connected the dots’ to found the company after many years working in banking and property.
“The driving force was to create a solution for consumers to change their details, while enabling service providers to ingest those change automatically, with as little effort and cost as possible,” Lee said.
Dance said that about 3.8 million people move house and change address, but there's approximately 2 million more who change other contact details, such as name, email and mobile etc, each year. Each person could be interacting with 20 different service providers.
He said that until now there had been nothing available to assist consumers to change their address with all of the service providers that they dealt with, including the likes of banks, utilities, the AEC and many others.
“Each service provider has their own solution, which are often just horrendous to use,” Dance said. “All have their own systems, they are all clunky, and they all take consumers’ time, rather than making it easy.”
Smart Move, which is seeking $2m from investors to take the app to market, will initially focus on target verticals, including real estate and mortgage broking, loyalty programs, and financial services.
It will integrate with provider systems, such as CRMs, billing and marketing solutions, and include security features such as two-factor authentication. It can also verify addresses against an official database.
The founding team expects it will need to recruit major service providers to champion, endorse and encourage the mass consumer uptake of the Smart Move app for its launch to be successful.
