TL;DR
- Launched GoVal and ValAssist within weeks of COVID restrictions to keep property valuations flowing when physical inspections became impossible across Australia
- Protected millions in at-risk valuation platform revenue serving Tier 1 banking clients including CBA, NAB and ANZ
- Crisis delivery in regulated environments works because of pre-existing trust, not shortcuts through governance
The Problem
Property valuations underpin mortgage lending. No valuation, no loan approval. No loan approval, no settlement. When COVID lockdowns restricted physical property inspections across Australia, the pipeline froze.
Cotality's valuation platforms (PropertyHub and ValConnect) served tens of thousands of brokers and bankers, along with valuers, across CBA, NAB, ANZ and other major lenders. Every workflow assumed a valuer would physically inspect the property. That assumption broke overnight.
Millions in annual revenue from valuation products was directly at risk. Not because clients were cancelling, but because the product could no longer serve its core function. If valuations couldn't be ordered or completed, both platforms had no purpose.
The challenge was speed without compromise. A property valuation shown to a bank is a regulated financial instrument in an AFSL-regulated environment. Shortcuts that compromised valuation quality would create larger problems than a temporary pause.
The Approach
Two products addressed different segments of the problem. GoVal enabled desktop-based valuations using Cotality's property data assets: comparable sales, automated valuation models, satellite and street-level imagery, historical transaction data and property attributes. ValAssist provided automated valuation support for lower-risk, data-rich properties where statistical models could deliver confidence levels acceptable to lending institutions.
Both were integrated directly into the existing PropertyHub and ValConnect workflows. For a broker ordering a valuation, the experience was unchanged. For a valuer completing an assessment, the tools surfaced everything needed for remote work within their existing workbench. No new portals. No retraining.
Key Decisions
1. Build Products, Not Patches
The instinct during a crisis is to ship a temporary fix and clean it up later. The execution and delivery principles I follow made the decision clear: we chose to build GoVal and ValAssist as standalone product capabilities with their own workflows, quality controls and audit trails. Desktop valuations weren't a workaround for physical inspections. They were a new product mode.
This paid off. Desktop and hybrid valuation models became permanent parts of the offering, expanding the addressable use cases for PropertyHub and ValConnect well beyond the pandemic.
2. Risk-Tiered Valuation Models
Not every property could be assessed remotely with the same confidence. We built a risk-tiering framework: properties with strong comparable sales data, recent imagery and standard construction could proceed through desktop valuation. Higher-risk properties (unusual construction, limited comparable data, high-value commercial assets) were flagged for physical inspection when restrictions lifted, or for hybrid assessments combining desktop analysis with limited site visits.
Banking clients needed this framework. A blanket "all valuations are now desktop" approach would have been rejected by compliance teams at CBA, NAB and ANZ. The risk tiers gave lending institutions a defensible basis for accepting remote valuations within their regulatory obligations.
3. Accelerated Enterprise Co-Design
The typical co-design cadence with banking partners involved quarterly roadmap reviews and structured feedback loops. COVID compressed that to daily coordination with valuation operations teams. We ran rapid validation cycles on acceptable risk thresholds, data requirements and audit trail standards.
This worked because the relationships were already established. Years of partnership meant we weren't building credibility during a crisis. We were drawing on existing trust to move faster than the normal governance cadence would allow.
4. Data Assets as the Foundation
Cotality's property data was the competitive advantage that made remote valuations possible. Comparable sales databases, automated valuation models, property attribute records and imagery gave valuers the evidence base they needed to complete assessments without attending the property. No competitor could have shipped an equivalent product without equivalent data depth.
GoVal and ValAssist weren't technology plays. They were data plays enabled by technology.
Results
- Millions in at-risk valuation platform revenue protected during pandemic restrictions
- GoVal and ValAssist delivered within weeks of lockdown restrictions commencing
- Desktop and hybrid valuation workflows adopted permanently into the product offering
- No AI-related regulatory incidents during my tenure despite accelerated delivery timeline
- Risk-tiered assessment framework reused for subsequent AI feature classification
- Banking partner relationships strengthened through crisis collaboration
- Expanded the total addressable market for valuation products beyond physical-inspection-only workflows
Tech Stack
PropertyHub (tens of thousands of brokers and bankers), ValConnect (valuer workbench), Cotality property data assets (comparable sales, AVMs, property attributes, imagery), Tier 1 banking partnerships (CBA, NAB, ANZ), AFSL-regulated valuation workflows, crisis delivery cadence