Former Mortgage Choice chief executive Paul Lahiff has been elected chairman of the board of Lixi, the financial standards-setting body, and has set himself the task of establishing Lixi's standards as the communications protocol for the national electronic conveyancing system that is due to start operating in 2013.E-conveyancing, which has been on the drawing board for some time, will be a big efficiency driver for the mortgage industry."It is logical for the participants to use Lixi," said Lahiff. Lixi has had talks with National E-Conveyancing Development Ltd, which is the body charged with creating the new system and is hopeful of being involved.Lixi was set up to develop a common communications standard for mortgage processing. The organisation is currently working on the implementation of Lixi 2.0, which extends the standard to data definitions, messaging and tools.The new standard has been slow in coming to fruition and Lahiff has made it his goal to have it in place in the first half of 2012.Other members of the Lixi board include Milton Chan, general manager of IT at Advantedge, which is National Australia Bank's third-party lending division, and James Sheffield from Commonwealth Bank.The Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia, Sandstone Technology, QBE LMI, Aussie and Mill Street Consulting also have representatives on the board.Lahiff is keen to ensure that all the big banks are represented on the Lixi board and he will be aiming to secure representatives from ANZ and Westpac.He believes Lixi has a bigger role to play in the industry now that financial institutions and intermediaries have turned their attention to efficiency.Lahiff said: "There are still so many activities in the back offices of financial institutions that are not efficient. Lixi can position itself as a utility to help with issues, like getting re-work out of processes and achieving greater levels of compatibility between systems."