Loop + Kotini: Why a fragmented vendor journey is costing your agency

Your vendor has just said yes. They want to go ahead. And then you send them an AML link from one platform, a contract to e-sign via Adobe, and a property information questionnaire (PIQ) through the post. Three separate tools, three separate login experiences, for one client at the most important moment in your relationship with them.

That’s not an edge case. For a lot of agencies, that’s Tuesday.

The problem nobody talks about out loud

Most estate agents know their onboarding process is clunky. What they underestimate is what that clunkiness actually costs them.

There’s the obvious cost – time. Every additional tool your team has to log into, manage a subscription for, and train new starters on is time pulled away from listings, valuations, and client relationships. Mark Bevan, managing director of Loop Software, which works with around 870 agencies and 3,000 daily users across the UK, put it plainly:

“There’s a lot of automation out there that can assist you with mundane tasks and time-saving efforts. But agencies probably utilise about 50% of what they have. They’re not getting the return they should be.”

• Mark Bevan, Managing Director, Loop Software

Then there’s the less obvious cost: the vendor experience. The moment a client agrees to list with you is a high-trust moment. Handing them a fragmented, multi-step digital experience – with links arriving from different systems, branded inconsistently, requiring separate actions in a confusing sequence – quietly erodes the confidence they just placed in you.

And the modern consumer notices. They’re not comparing your onboarding process only to other estate agents. They’re comparing it to every digital experience they have – buying something on Amazon, booking a holiday, renewing their insurance. The bar isn’t set by your competitors. It’s set by the best consumer product they used this week.

What the best-run agencies are doing differently

The agencies performing most consistently aren’t necessarily using more technology. They’re using what they have more completely – and they’re consolidating wherever possible.

They dig into their CRM instead of around it. The features that could save your team an hour a day are often already built into the system you’re paying for. They’re just switched off, undiscovered, or not yet embedded into how your team works. The agencies that get the most from their platforms are the ones where leaders – managing directors especially – drive adoption from the top down. When every person in the business is using every relevant feature, the efficiency gains compound quickly.

They push for a single vendor journey. The clearest indicator of a well-run onboarding process is how many different tools your vendor has to interact with before their property goes live. The goal is one. One portal, one experience, one login from their side. Everything from anti-money laundering (AML) checks – the legal requirement to verify a client’s identity – through to contract signing, material information gathering, and payment should sit within the same workflow. Not bolted together. Actually integrated.

They treat training as an investment, not a cost. Online training modules are useful, but they don’t drive the kind of adoption that moves the needle. Face-to-face onboarding – particularly when agencies are switching CRM platforms – means your team understands not just how a feature works, but why it matters and how it fits their specific workflow. As Mark put it: “If you’re face-to-face and you’re seeing the whites of the eyes of people, we tend to see that works a lot better.”

Why consolidation is a no-brainer – even when it has a cost

There’s a predictable moment in conversations about consolidating your proptech stack. Someone mentions the cost. And yes, adding an integrated onboarding platform to your existing CRM has a price. But the framing is usually wrong.

Most agencies are already paying for the individual components – identity verification, contract signing, payment processing – spread across multiple subscriptions, often with duplicated functionality and separate renewal dates to manage. Consolidating that into one integrated workflow rarely increases total spend. It usually reduces it, and almost always reduces the administrative overhead of managing it.

“When you think of the quickness of the journey and they’re already probably paying for these sorts of things anyway, combining it into one platform, it’s just an easy sell and an easy win.”

• Mark Bevan, Managing Director, Loop Software

The cleaner argument, though, is the vendor side. Kotini client Ashley Cain at Moverhome described the shift to an integrated journey in exactly these terms – in hindsight, it was obvious. The question isn’t whether your vendors deserve a better experience. It’s whether the fragmented one you’re currently delivering is doing quiet damage to your reputation and your conversion rate.

There’s also a harder commercial logic emerging for agencies moving toward fixed-fee or upfront payment models. If you want vendors to commit financially at instruction – and many of the most profitable agencies now do – you need an onboarding process that makes that feel easy and natural, not like an administrative burden they’re being asked to absorb on top of everything else. Integrated payment processing, built into the same workflow as your compliance checks and contract signing, makes upfront payments feel like part of the process rather than an awkward addition to it.

The regulation question

It’s worth being direct about one thing: the compliance requirements around onboarding aren’t going away, and they aren’t getting simpler.

Material information – the legal requirement for agents to gather and present specified property details before listing – has raised the bar on what happens between instruction and going live. AML checks are standard practice but remain a point of friction in many agencies’ workflows. The direction of travel is clear: more information, verified earlier, documented more thoroughly.

The agencies that have adapted fastest are the ones that stopped treating compliance as a separate workflow and integrated it into their standard listing process. When AML checks, material information gathering, and contract signing all happen in the same place – and results come back quickly, as clients now expect – compliance stops feeling like a burden and starts feeling like a natural part of how you work.

Kieran Witt, co-founder of Kotini, made this point during the conversation:

“Regulation and legislation doesn’t ever really go backwards. It only ever gets stronger. So it’s part of the job that a lot of estate agents need to do – but it’s not why I became an agent. I just want to deal with my clients, prospect new leads, and get those properties on the market.”

• Kieran Witt, Co-founder, Kotini

The goal of integrated onboarding isn’t to make compliance disappear. It’s to stop it being the thing that slows you down between instruction and live.

What this means for your agency

If you’re looking at where to make a meaningful improvement to how your agency operates, start with the vendor journey.

Map out every step from instruction to the property going live on Rightmove. Count how many different platforms your vendor interacts with. Count how many your team logs into. Then ask honestly: what would it look like if that number was one?

A few practical starting points:

Talk to your CRM provider about what you’re not using. Most platforms have features sitting dormant that could address exactly the friction you’re experiencing. You’ve paid for them. Find out what they are.

Audit your compliance workflow. If AML checks, material information, and PIQ collection are happening in separate tools with separate logins, that’s a consolidation opportunity – and probably a time saving of 30 to 60 minutes per instruction.

Consider where payment fits into your onboarding process. If you’re moving toward upfront or fixed-fee models, your onboarding platform needs to support that naturally. Payment processing bolted on at the end is a different experience from payment built into the instruction flow from the start.

And when you find something that isn’t working – in your CRM, in your onboarding platform, anywhere in the stack – tell your supplier. The best technology partners in this market are building with their clients, not just for them. That feedback loop is part of what you’re paying for.

If you want to see how Kotini integrates with your existing CRM to create a single vendor journey from instruction to live, get in touch and we can walk you through how it works in practice.