April Mortgages Conveyancing Panel Information

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g.existing/new/seen in person)
• Disclosure/Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)
• Number of conveyancing cases by lender
• Evidence of undertaking logs

When a solicitor is acting for both April Mortgages and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent. In the situation you find yourself in if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender the solicitor must cease to act for the April Mortgages and it may well be prudent you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You can not tell the April Mortgages the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your April Mortgages conveyancing panel status.

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.

Assuming that your firm in is on the April Mortgages conveyancing panel and you are acting for them in relation to a leasehold property, you must report to them if it becomes apparent that the landlord is either absent or insolvent. If April Mortgages are to lend, they may require indemnity insurance. In any event,you will need to check April Mortgages’s specific requirements. Notwithstanding whether April Mortgages will lend in such circumstances you still need to advise the borrower (unless you are acting for April Mortgages alone) as to the risks of buying a property with an insolvent or absentee freeholder.

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 gone on.

You should get in touch with April Mortgages to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook incorporates an explicit inquiry for lenders to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. April Mortgages in their Part 2’s state: Don’t forget to quote the firm’s April Mortgages conveyancing panel number.