April Mortgages Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lender requirements of April Mortgages are silent on this. Most lenders deal with the issue of file retention via their Terms and Conditions where they generally provide that for evidential purposes, the firm must keep the file for at least of 6 years from the date of the mortgage. Data imagining is normally suitable compliance with this requirement. Many lenders point out in that it is the practice of some fraudsters to demand the conveyancing file on completion in order to destroy evidence that may later be used against them. It is therefore important to retain these documents to protect April Mortgages’s interest. To be absolutely sure of April Mortgages requirements in this regard please check the Terms and Conditions of April Mortgages’s conveyancing panel acceptance.

In operating open conveyancing panels, lenders such as April Mortgages face a number of fraud and negligence risks. While there is no authoritative source of data on lender exposure to solicitor–led mortgage fraud, anecdotal evidence from lenders indicates exposure on individual cases are often in the millions of pounds. The National Fraud Authority estimates that £1bn per year is lost in mortgage -related frauds in total, which is seen as a conservative estimate.

These risks are exacerbated by the lack of a comprehensive set of data on all conveyancing firms (which, for the avoidance of doubt, would include solicitors and conveyancers across the UK) which is in a readily accessible format. Currently, lenders vet the suitability of their panel firms against a variety of disparate, incomplete and potentially inaccurate sets of information. One top 5 lender pointed out to us that it is almost impossible to track individual fraudsters who move from firm to firm, especially where they are no longer registered or no longer hold a valid practicing certificate.

April Mortgages and other lenders are in varying stages of reviewing their approach to vetting firms on their conveyancing panels, to ensure their ongoing exposure to unsuitable firms is reduced. There is also regulatory impetus on lenders to ensure that they have satisfactory oversight of their third party panels, including a due-diligence process.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as April Mortgages to take a much more pro-active approach in relation to the management and make up of their conveyancer panels. The knock on effect of this is that it is more likely that there will be a higher number of cases where a conveyancer is not on the April Mortgages panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and April Mortgages have appointed a separate lawyer to act on their behalf where the new CML Part 3 requirements apply. Section 11.1 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Part 3 requires April Mortgages’s panel solicitor to ‘ ...transfer the mortgage advance directly to the Seller’s conveyancer. The Seller’s conveyancer must be required to hold the mortgage advance on the terms of the required undertaking. The example borrower’s conveyancer’s undertaking letter includes a specific example of the seller’s undertaking’. You should expect to be advised to received the mortgage advance directly from the conveyancing solicitors for April Mortgages. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to April Mortgages’s solicitors to discharge any charges secured on the property and to send directly to them the executed transfer and any other documents required to enable us to effect registration. Please remember to carefully consider undertakings in accordance with your firm’s protocol and record them in your undertakings logg. Please remember that as well as this breach of this undertaking having regulatory and compliance implications it’s breach could also result in your firm being removed off the April Mortgages conveyancing panel.

There are various requirements are to followed if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook. First, You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as valued and the title and other documents which a reasonably competent conveyancer should obtain, and, if there are, you must tell April Mortgages immediately. Second, You should take reasonable steps to verify that the assumptions stated by the valuer about the title (for example, its tenure, easements, boundaries and restrictions on its use) in the valuation and as stated in April Mortgages’s mortgage offer are correct. If they are not, please let April Mortgages know as soon as possible as it will be necessary for April Mortgages to check with the valuer whether the valuation needs to be revised. April Mortgages conveyancing panel solicitors are not expected to assume the role of valuer. April Mortgages are simply trying to ensure that the valuer has valued the property based on correct information. Thirdly, April Mortgages recommend that you should advise the borrower that there may be defects in the property which are not revealed by the inspection carried out by their valuer and there may be omissions or inaccuracies in the report which do not matter to them as a lender but which would matter to the borrower. April Mortgages recommend that, if we send a copy of a valuation report that April Mortgages have obtained, you should also advise the borrower that the borrower should not rely on the report in deciding whether to proceed with the purchase and that he obtains his own more detailed report on the condition and value of the property, based on a fuller inspection such as a homebuyers report or structural survey. If you do not receive a copy of the valuation you can always ask for a copy of one from April Mortgages or the borrower. You still need to comply with the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Requirement relating to valuation reports even if you don't receive one directly. Failure to comply not only runs the risk of facing a claim by the lender but also being removed from the April Mortgages conveyancing panel

We would recommend that you supply details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not negatively affect your firm’s application but gives the Law Society viability as to what has occured.

You should get in touch with April Mortgages to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook contains an explicit section for banks to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. April Mortgages in their Part 2’s state: Please remember to quote the firm’s April Mortgages conveyancing panel reference.