An early adopter of desktop valuations in Australia is Commonwealth Bank. The bank received some stick for doing so in the past, including in this newsletter, with the subtleties of the bank's approach misunderstood at the time.James Sheffield, general manager mortgage wealth at CBA, says the banks are buying and developing database driven valuation solutions to reduce overall costs to lenders, meeting the demands of lenders and brokers, improving profit margins by reducing costs while still maintaining a constant level of risk.He continued that desktop valuations provide a high degree of certainty with a quick turn around time, but only form a small part of the valuation strategy, with the majority still performed by physical inspection.Sheffield does anticipate the bank using more database driven solutions in the future, as Australia embraces the techniques that have grown rapidly in overseas markets, but these "will never be a substitute for high risk lend properties.""You must balance the scale of risk versus reward."John Goodall, manager valuations at CBA continues with electronic solutions providing greater control with managing enormous amounts of data, compared to the historic paper based methods where information was often filed away to never see the light of day again.Goodall finds the added security of an EVR reassuring as the information must pass certain checkpoints, and if a valuation fails, it's clear to see why and the checkpoint criteria can be adjusted to support the bank's risk valuation tolerance.This method provides a high level of control and accuracy, with increased visibility and data validation via the audit trail which is developed through the electronic collection of data.