Leeds Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Criteria differ from lender to lender. We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the Leeds Building Society conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

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

Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)

Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society

List of all Licensed Conveyancers within firm

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

Summary of annual accounts

SRA or equivalent regulator registration number where applicable

top-up split and history of any refusals

List of fee-earners who are foreign qualified

Number of lender conveyancing panels the firm is currently on

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Number of conveyancing cases by lender
• Buy to Let transactions
• Average mortgage advance
• Average time frame to send deeds to the lender (calculated from completion date or title registration)
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Leeds 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 compliance officer 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 Leeds Building Society conveyancing panel.

You should supply details of the date of removal, information on the reason for removal, date of appeal and any reason given for reinstatement. This should not negatively affect your firm’s application but gives the CQS team a complete picture of what has occured.

You need to communicate with Leeds Building Society to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook includes an express inquiry for banks to reveal who to contact to obtain standard documents. Leeds Building Society in their Part 2’s state: You will need to disclose your Leeds Building Society solicitors panel reference.