Birmingham Bank Conveyancing Panel Information

Please tread carefully here as what you are proposing may not be acceptable to the mortgage company. It is possible that you (as a non-panel firm) or the mortgage applicant are not at liberty instruct a panel firm of your choice. An increasing amount of lenders are making it clear to their panel firms that where a non-panel member firm is instructed by one of their mortgage applicants, the lender must appoint a panel firm to carry out its instructions and to liaise with the borrower's conveyancer. You also need to make the costs implications and potential for delay very clear to your client.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Birmingham Bank 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 Birmingham Bank panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Birmingham Bank 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 Birmingham Bank’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 Birmingham Bank. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Birmingham Bank’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 Birmingham Bank conveyancing panel.

For most lenders participation on the lender's panel of conveyancers is at the absolute discretion of the the lender. Many lenders reserve the right to accept or reject any application without giving any reason. You should check your original application to join the Birmingham Bank conveyancing panel to see if you are entitled to a reason.

CQS accreditation is no guarantee to lender panel acceptance. Nevertheless the CML have indicated that it is likely to become a prerequisite for firms wishing to join their approved list of firms. A number of mortgage companies now use CQS as the starting point for Panel membership such as Astra Mortgages.

You would be advised to communicate with Birmingham Bank to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook incorporates an express inquiry for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Birmingham Bank in their Part 2’s state: Always remember to disclose your Birmingham Bank solicitors panel reference.