Fact Sheets
Online lodgement and settlement
What is e-Lodge?
Electronic Conveyancing (EC) provides the facility to process and electronically lodge conveyancing documents into Land Victoria (LV) including:
- Instruments
- Registrar's Instructions
- Administrative Notices (e.g. Certificate of Title conversion requests).
All Instruments, Registrar's Instructions and Administrative Notices are digitally signed by Subscribers before being validated and submitted to LV. After validation and when lodged with LV, the Instruments, Registrar's Instructions and Administrative Notices follow the normal Registration process.
What is e-Settle?
Settlement, as provided by the EC system, is a seamless and continuous process which allows for:
- online financial settlement of property transactions via the Financial Settlement Manager
- the electronic lodgement of Instruments, Registrar's Instructions and Administrative Notices with LV
- the sending of duty and land tax information (including
the payment of stamp duty and sending of agreed Notice of Acquisition data information) to the
relevant state tax or revenue office. In Victoria this is the State Revenue Office (SRO).
The Financial Settlement Manager (FSM)
The FSM is responsible for the financial settlement. In EC, the FSM role is fulfilled by the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
ASX will receive the data along with relevant digital signatures for each source and distribution of funds and will arrange irrevocable inter-bank settlement.
The financial institution that provides the source of funds for any EC transaction must be an EC Subscriber. To find a current Subscriber, refer to the EC Subscribers list.
The financial institution receiving settlement funds distributed via the EC system as the result of financial settlement must be a registered Payment Provider with ASX. For those financial institutions that are able to receive electronic funds via the EC system as the result of financial settlement, refer to the FSM Participants list.
The role of the Electronic Lodgement File (ELF) in EC
EC uses the ELF as a means of collecting, controlling and remitting all the required lodgement and settlement data.
- The ELF provides for the property settlement details to be irrevocably and non-repudiably digitally signed when the participating Subscribers have completed their data input.
- Subscribers also add and verify details in the ELF for both the source and the disbursement of funds.
- In addition, all participating Subscribers (eg financial institutions, solicitors and/or conveyancers) will digitally sign a financial summary of the transaction.
- A settlement time and date will be agreed between the parties using the ELF. At this agreed settlement time, all ELFs that are ready are 'frozen' for processing.
- A pre-lodgement check is performed on all ready ELFs to ensure that the Registrar's Instruments are validated for assured lodgement. ELFs that do not pass this validation will not be processed.
- EC will extract the financial data from each ELF, create a Financial Settlement File and forward this to ASX. A
participating Subscriber can stop settlement at any time prior to the ELF being frozen for processing. The consequence
of this action is the same as would apply in the paper system.
After financial settlement
Following successful financial settlement, ASX will send details of individual financial line items to the relevant financial institutions to debit/credit their customer’s bank accounts and advise EC of the successful financial settlement.
EC will notify participating Subscribers of the successful financial settlement, submit the Registrar’s Instruments and Instructions to LV for lodgement and submit duty and land tax data to the relevant state tax or revenue office. EC will then notify participating Subscribers that the ELF has been successfully processed.
