Danske Bank Conveyancing Panel Information

The fact of the matter is that estate agents are suffering if their clients start out on the conveyancing process having appointed a solicitor who is not on the panel with the purchaser’s chosen lender. Many conveyancing firms are only discovering when they begin working on a case that they are no longer able to work with that lender. Given the inevitable resultant delays in the transaction the chances of an abortive deal increases dramatically. in the circumstances there is understandable anguish on the part of the estate agent as a result of the lost time should the client have to change lawyers.

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Danske Bank 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 should give some thought to whether she/he needs to take any action as result of being removed from the Danske Bank conveyancing panel.

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

You should provide details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not adversely impact your firm’s application but gives the Law Society a complete picture of what has occured.

You need to contact Danske Bank to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook contains an explicit question for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Danske Bank in their Part 2’s state: Always remember to disclose your Danske Bank conveyancing panel reference.