Update on RBA technical incident and settlement processing

We want to provide further information on how the RBA and PEXA approached settlement processing during the recent RBA technical incident (27 January). During the incident, PEXA’s aim was to clear as many scheduled settlements as possible whilst minimising disruption for our customers and your clients. 

We recognise that this incident was frustrating for customers, particularly given there was limited clarity we could provide about the cause and likely duration of the disruption at the time. We appreciate the patience shown as the situation unfolded and while the RBA worked to restore services and keep PEXA informed. 

Throughout the incident, PEXA’s priority was to protect the integrity of the settlement process while supporting customers to complete transactions as quickly as circumstances allowed.  

There are several specific points we’d like to address with respect to the extent of the impact and subsequent flow-on issues.  

What happened and when? 

The problem first arose late morning and the RBA advised they were working on a fix. This was eventually applied successfully later in the afternoon. During this period there was unfortunately no material progress to report from the RBA and as a result PEXA status updates remained the same for most of the day.  After RBA services were progressively restored later in the day, a further RBA issue arose in the early evening that further delayed settlements. 

The RBA settlement window ordinarily closes at 8.05pm, and an extension was granted until 10.45pm on the evening of the incident. This enabled almost 5,000 settlements to be successfully completed and enabled PEXA to minimise the impact of the outage across the ecosystem. Despite this, approximately 900 settlements were unable to be completed that evening, resulting in some flow-on effects.  The majority of these settlements completed first thing the following day (28 January) with the remainder, around 100, isolated to Victoria, settled on Thursday, 29 January.  

The flow on effect in Victoria 

This Victorian-specific situation related to a validation issue between the Duty Certification and Duty Assessment Date. While both PEXA and the Victorian State Revenue Office processes worked as designed, the overnight delay stemming from the RBA outage caused this outcome.

To address this problem, the affected workspaces that failed to process on 27 January were “rolled-back” including the return of trust account funds to the originating trust account. The roll back of trust funds may only occur at end of day, hence these workspaces were not able to proceed to settlement until 29 January. 

Other options, including manually intervening in each settlement to reconcile Duty Assessment, were evaluated and considered too great an operational risk to the integrity of the settlements.      

Transfer of title and delay in transfer of funds 

In some other instances, customers may have observed a delay between transfer of title and the settlement of funds.  

The lag in settlement process sequence was a direct result of the unusual and unique circumstances created by the RBA outage. Importantly, at no point were property transfers lodged without PEXA having received an acknowledgement from the RBA that funds had been securely reserved. 

PEXA appreciates this was very concerning and confusing, particularly given the already unusual circumstances on the day. PEXA’s priority was ensure that as many settlements as possible could be completed on the day – without compromising the security and integrity of the settlement process.  

Communication

Throughout the incident we sought to keep communications transparent and prompt via our status page and customer updates as clear, simple and accurate as possible. This was challenging given the ongoing uncertainty about when RBA services and settlement processing would fully resume, and what the impact would be. 

Direct email updates were provided to impacted customers as new information became available, including later in the evening, which we considered important to ensure timely communication. 

Thank you to all customers who took the time to contact us, and again, we appreciate your feedback and patience. 

We will be in touch again once the RBA completes its own comprehensive review and our own review process is finalised. We expect this to occur by the end of February.