Valuation Exchange conducted around 250,000 valuations during the 2007 financial year, with volumes strongly increasing in the second half thanks to the business of Commonwealth Bank (the first major bank to use the exchange) becoming a client."We have been adding clients from all parts of the mortgage industry," said Adrian Winskill, national manager group sales at Valex. "We have major retail banks like the Commonwealth, we have smaller lenders such as GMAC and Pepper, and we also have a number of individual mortgage managers."Lenders request around 1000 valuations each day from Valex, subject to seasonal factors. Winskill said current levels could easily be doubled, with the system readily scalable if volumes grew beyond that."For the mortgage managers, they are more concerned with the speed of turnaround, ease of use and communications, so they want real-time updates of each valuation."We are going through a process at the moment of putting on a few clients, where volumes start slow and build up."We definitely think there will be a trend away from fully inspected valuations to the various types of electronic models, including the desktop style of valuation."The question nobody can answer at the moment is the pace at which that will happen."I think at the moment lenders using a mix of valuation types are using 80 to 90 per cent full valuations, with 10 to 20 per cent desktop and electronic types."It is also difficult to know where the balance will settle."Andrew Robertson, chief executive of Valex, said the firm's system was designed to accommodate different valuation techniques."It is possible for a client to order an automated valuation model or a desktop valuation from Valex, and in those cases we don't handle them ourselves, but outsource them to the specialist providers."This is done in the same way we outsource full valuations to valuation firms, with the benefit to the client that they can receive all valuations from the one system."  The Valex national panel of valuers has increased to around 200, from 140 mid last year.