Capital Home Loans Conveyancing Panel Information

Each lender has different criteria. We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the Capital Home Loans conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

Areas of Law covered by the firm

Whether any lender has ever made a claim against the firm’s PII cover

Summary of annual accounts

List of all solicitors within firm

Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers

List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable

List of all those who can sign off the Certificate Of Title

Whether the firm has ever applied for accreditation and the outcome of the application

Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes

Solicitor

When a solicitor is acting for both Capital Home Loans 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 Capital Home Loans and it may well be prudent you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You can not tell the Capital Home Loans 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 Capital Home Loans conveyancing panel status.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Capital Home Loans 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 Capital Home Loans panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Capital Home Loans 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 Capital Home Loans’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 Capital Home Loans. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Capital Home Loans’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 Capital Home Loans 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. (a) 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 Capital Home Loans immediately. (II) 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 Capital Home Loans’s mortgage offer are correct. If they are not, please let Capital Home Loans know as soon as possible as it will be necessary for Capital Home Loans to check with the valuer whether the valuation needs to be revised. Capital Home Loans conveyancing panel solicitors are not expected to assume the role of valuer. Capital Home Loans are simply trying to ensure that the valuer has valued the property based on correct information. (c) Capital Home Loans 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. Capital Home Loans recommend that, if we send a copy of a valuation report that Capital Home Loans 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 survey or structural survey. If you do not receive a copy of the valuation you can always ask for a copy of one from Capital Home Loans 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 Capital Home Loans conveyancing panel

The best placed professionals to answer this question are your insurance brokers. The chances are that on the basis that you have not been removed for fraud or negligence reasons that there will be little or no impact. The main reason why a firm would be removed off of a lender panel is due to low volume of conveyancing cases although there may be a number of criteria for Capital Home Loans solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You would be advised to get in touch with Capital Home Loans to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook has an explicit inquiry for banks to establish who to contact to obtain standard documents. Capital Home Loans in their Part 2’s state: You will need to quote your Capital Home Loans solicitors panel reference.