In 2005, The Law Council of Australia established a National Electronic Conveyancing System Committee to advance the development of a national electronic conveyancing system for the lodgment and financial settlement of property transactions. PEXA Group Limited (‘PEXA”), established in 2010 in collaboration with the New South Wales, Victorian and Queensland governments, became the first eConveyancing business, or Electronic Network Lodgment Operator (“ELNO”), to operate in Australia. PEXA, through its PEXA Exchange, undertook approximately 99% of eConveyancing transactions as of July 2026, a position that the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (“IPART”)—the New South Wales regulator responsible for the pricing and oversight of key markets and government services—treats as an effective monopoly. IPART has reviewed the service fees that PEXA charges its subscribers, and recommended in July 2026 that PEXA’s ELNO service fees continue to be regulated on a permanent basis, and that PEXA’s regulated revenue be reduced by approximately 20% through a one-off reduction to most transfer fees.
In establishing the maximum prices PEXA can charge, IPART uses a “building block model” to measure its asset base—the value of the past investment in the PEXA Exchange on which PEXA is allowed to earn a return and which it is allowed to recover over time. PART acknowledges that the rate of return is the most influential assumption in estimating the money invested in PEXA Exchange that is still owed back.
During IPART’s review of ELNO Service Fees, Professor Kilian Huber and Professor Mark E. Zmijewski were retained by PEXA to evaluate the rate of return that PEXA investors expected to earn on their investments. In their submission to IPART, Professors Huber and Zmijewski analyzed PEXA’s risks and estimated PEXA’s return based on three methods: exit rates, a discounted cash flow model (“DCF”), and the venture capital literature.