 Today, and thank you for joining us today, I am Jan Loffel and I am the CEO of BIPROP South Africa. I've been asked to talk to you about the importance of using trusted prop tech in the residential rental payment space. Before I kick off, I just want to extend a special word of thanks to Amasi, Carl and the rest of the team of private property. It is a huge privilege for my colleagues and I to participate in this event today. I also want to commend the team of private property for taking the initiative to host yet another world class event amidst all the challenges that we have been facing as South Africans and more specifically the challenges that we have been facing as the South African real estate fraternity. Something about me, I am a former public prosecutor and also a former bank litigation attorney but I ventured into the mortgage origination space and the franchise sector in an attempt to help consumers. I wanted to put people in homes rather than to evict them from it. In 2006 I ventured closer to the real estate fraternity and I ended up spending a few years in the franchise real estate sector. I joined BIPROP in January 2019 and I used to be a BIPROP user. Our franchise group used BIPROP for a number of years after we had tried to do it yourself solution en also tried some joint venture arrangements. BIPROP is an automated payment platform for the residential rental industry allowing rental agencies to transact with landlords and tenants in a quick, safe and transparent way using world class technology. Since 2004 and up to August this year BIPROP South Africa has successfully processed more than 66.6 billion rand in rental payments en we recently have been processing more than a billion rand a month in a single month. That is in South Africa alone. We also process rental payments in other countries, namely the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada while we also have a presence in Switzerland predominantly for our sister company that processes donations for charitable causes through the non-profit Swiss Foundation, given Gain. So let me share a few thoughts before I hand over to my colleague Yured Smuts who is BIPROP's head of data analytics. Yured is also the general manager of BIPROP Capital, our group's financial advisory intermediary services company. As we enter the latter part of 2020, most South African businesses and individuals are feeling financially straind due to the far-reaching effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The same is true in the property rental industry as landlords, tenants and agents alike are forced to have difficult conversations, sometimes about affordability, sometimes renegotiating the terms and conditions of their lease agreements and of course upholding their commitments. When times are tough and even under normal circumstances it is important for the parties to the rental contract, namely the landlord and the tenant and then of course also the agency to deal with a trusted payment service provider. Ask him why? Well for starters we need to eliminate human error and of course we need to eliminate creative look keeping. Electronic payment security is more crucial than ever for rental agents in the COVID-19 era as the use of cash has plummeted and businesses raised to accept money online. According to a management consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the volume of online payments has sought globally and so has online fraud. There has been a 700% increase in online fraud since March 2020. Just try to increase your professional liability cover and you'll definitely see the difference in your monthly premiums. Any agency that handles online transactions or client funds whether that's manually or electronically has a duty to ensure that those funds are kept safe. Agencies that are new to taking online payments must have suitable security systems in place to prevent online attacks and fraud. As a general rule, information should never be passed unencrypted. The personal and financial information of consumers should be protected with rigorous data centre security and proper backups. Why is the protection of sensitive information so important? Firstly there is a reputation or risk. Theft of data can be as damaging to an agency as his financial theft and it can carry equally heavy fines. Then there is operational risk. Losing information can disrupt or hold your business operations and significantly damage your client relationships. Then of course there is liability. The possibility of civil claims and even criminal charges should not be forgotten. Let's talk about people, potentially the weakest link in many businesses. The most advanced cyber attacks exploit human vulnerabilities as often as they exploit technological weaknesses. Attackers often pose as trusted senders of recipients to steal information or to divert funds. The property industry cannot afford to become complacent when it comes to the handling of client funds or trust funds. The rental market needs to increase its focus on tightening up on electronic and human security measures as relying on the one or the other is no longer adequate. How can agencies do that? Better training of employees to recognize attempts at threat of fraud is important. For example, how to identify a fashion attack. While employing more automated systems and moving away from manual processes is critically important. Agencies should commit to regular external audits and they should submit their systems and their networks to rigorous security testing exercises. Then there is the segregation of duties. No individual should be allowed to perform a single transaction from start to finish. Let's talk about the importance of trust fund separation. All rental agents and property managers are aware of the legal requirement for trust funds to be held separately from business funds. That is to ensure that third party funds are used for the intent purpose. As per Section 32, subsection 8 of the Estate Agency Affairs Act of 1976, client monies in trust accounts from part of neither PIPROP nor an estate agency's balance sheet ensuring that there is proper protection. For example, an agency's creditors cannot attach the funds kept in trust. However, simply following the provisions of Section 32 of the Estate Agency Affairs Act is not enough to have a proper level of segregated trust funds that will keep your tenants, landlords and estate agents safe. It is an act dating back to 1976 in the days when the internet did not even exist yet. So the basic separation of trust funds and business funds is inadequate. Client funds are still pulled together. It's aggregated, making it very difficult to identify who's funds are being paid out and used for what purposes. All tenant funds flow into the same main trust account. It's like a bucket full of water. There's different sources of water flowing into the same bucket. Now each month, some funds are scooped out of this bucket and it's distributed, but is each scoop delivered to the correct recipient and is it in the correct measure? Without separating individual clients' money there is no way of knowing which money belongs to whom. You could be paying property A's expenses with property B's money. So this requires next level trust fund separation because life happens, some tenants will pay early, some tenants will pay light, some will pay too much and other too little, or maybe not at all. Who does all that reconciliation and what happens when money is supposed to be retained in trust? Yes, where he's the tenant's damage deposit which is supposed to be applied or refunded only at the end of the lease term, depending on the condition of the property. And then sometimes there's also landlord's money that should be retained for repairs and maintenance in the subsistence of the lease and agents should not get this mixed up. Imagine that within a trust account or within that water bucket there is a little bucket for every property into which only funds that belong to a particular property can go. Each little bucket within the bigger bucket is further subdivided with space for funds held for the landlord and space for funds held for the tenant in trust funds are flowing. Does your prop tech enable you to manage that level of complexity? What prop tech differentiators do we see in the market? Live integration with the South African banking system guarantees that beneficiaries are only paid once funds have been cleared. Expenses are only paid with money meant for a specific property and any money we claim is separately stored and accounted for in real-time. In a protected bank integrated trust account environment a prop tech company should offer transparent real-time tenant and landlord reporting and it should maintain permanent or unbelievable audit logs. Incoming payments should be identified systematically and pre-reconciled for each individual property. Outgoing payments for supplier invoices for the landlord should be paid automatically based on payment rules as soon as the funds have been cleared. Multiple payments should be possible at the click of a button and the receipts should be automatically sent to the tenants and landlords just like the invoices were sent automatically earlier. Proof of payment should be stored separately and securely on the platform and your payment service provider should assist you with your next round of audits. Your undelietable audit trails should always be available to tell you who was responsible for what part of which transaction. Let's talk about using prop tech to your advantage. Property is and will always be a business for and of people. Sorry guys, I want to get that right. Let's talk about using prop tech to your advantage. Property is and always will be a business of and a business for people and technology should serve the real estate industry rather than to replace it. In other words, successful technologies should be an enabler rather than a disruptor of a real estate agency. A key principle to consider is, who is in charge? Is your prop tech telling you what to do next or are you telling it what to do and when to do it? Do you need to wait for someone to download or manipulate something before you can actually attend to your work? Do you have to copy and paste information? How much room for error is there? How much room for fraud is there? True automation is when your software works for you in a safe environment and it works with you not telling you what to do but responding to your rules. Let's look at the value of automation Automation boosts productivity, saves you time and money. You can use redeploy skills and your time to focus on other high value activities. Remember that time is a very scarce commodity. Most of all, automation delivers an awesome customer experience, whether you consider yourself to be the customer, whether you consider the landlord to be the customer or the tenant, it must be an awesome customer experience for everybody and a truly fully bank integrated platform can deliver that enhanced customer experience. I trust that you have gained new insights and that you've enjoyed my talk. I'm now going to hand you over to my colleague