Family Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

The requirements to join the Family Building Society conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

We only know of a couple of banks that operate a distinct conveyancing panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain threshold. You should nevertheless check directly with Family Building Society. At one stage HSBC would only allow Sole practitioners to act for them where the mortgage was below £150,000. We are not sure if HSBC still operate such a condition. In your case it is best to check with Family Building Society

You need to be careful here as what you are proposing may not be acceptable to the lender. It is possible that you (as a non-panel firm) or the mortgage applicant are not entitled 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.

With banks and conveyancing firms working so closely together 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 Family Building Society conveyancing panel but for all bank panel listings

The Law Society’s CQS accreditation gives 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 panels. A number of Lenders now use the scheme as the starting point for Panel membership such as Santander.

You should communicate with Family Building Society to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook contains an explicit section for banks to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. Family Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Don’t forget to quote the firm’s Family Building Society conveyancing panel reference.