Cambridge Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Cambridge Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA Mortgage Instructions state that the firm must keep the file for a minimum six years from the date of the mortgage. Data imaging is normally suitable compliance with this requirement. As a firm on the Cambridge Building Society conveyancing panel you must allow Cambridge Building Society to conduct such reasonable audit of your information security measures as Cambridge Building Society or their agents may to ensure your compliance with your file retention obligations.

The BSA introduced it’s Mortgage Instructions in 2010 to ensure that licensed conveyancers or solicitors on a building society conveyancing panel had full access to a complete set of standardised mortgage instructions.

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Cambridge Building Society conveyancing panel. The top 3 reasons are as follows:

1. lack of transactions
2. the lawyer is a sole practitioner
3. as part of the HSBC panel reduction.

In these three circumstances it is unlikely that you would expected to take any action. Disclosure and other compliance considerations are more likely to be relevant if the reason for removal is due to breaches of lender requirements or allegations of fraud or negligence. Whether the reasoning should trigger a disclosable 'material' breach will depend on the firm and the circumstances around possible failures to comply with the SRA Authorisation Rules, and the SRA will judge each case on its own merits. Factors such as the detriment or risk of detriment to clients, the scale of the issue and overall impact on the firm will need to be considered in deciding whether a failure is 'material'. As the COLP you will need systems to identify patterns of breaches. Even if you don't consider there to be regulatory implications, the firms COFA needs to consider whether he or she needs to take any action as result of being removed from the conveyancing panel of Cambridge Building Society.

The key here is the caveat ‘more onerous’.

You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the Cambridge Building Society conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the BSA Mortgage Instructions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before completing the answer.

You have a number of obligations in this regard which are to be followed if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the BSA Mortgage Instructions. (a) You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as compared to their old address.

With banks and solicitors working so closely with one another it is surprising that there has not been much call for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the Cambridge Building Society conveyancing panel but for all lender panel listings

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel