LiveMore Conveyancing Panel Information

You might expect LiveMore via their Part Two requirements to address this but the Handbook is silent on deadlines to send deeds. You need to look at the Terms of LiveMore’s Conveyancing Panel Appointment that you previously signed. For a number of banks these Terms include a clause such as: ‘To keep us informed of the reasons for any delay in your being able to send the title deeds and documents we require to us within 3 months of completion or evidence of proof of registration within that period. (We will send reminders if the deeds have not been received but will not acknowledge receipt of deeds’ It is important to keep LiveMore informed. Law firms can often compound their problems by not communicating with the lender when there is a delay or problem.

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

• Disclosure/Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• Average mortgage advance
• Current and historic missed priority dates
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g.existing/new/seen in person)
• Number of conveyancing cases by lender

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

LiveMore approved panel lawyers have to comply with the Part II instructions relating to Transfer of Equity. These are set out in Section 16.3. First, your firm must approve the form of Transfer of Equity (which should be in the Land Registry's standard form) and, if LiveMore require, the deed of covenant on their behalf. You will need to check LiveMore CML Part 2 conditions to see if LiveMore have standard forms of transfer and deed of covenant. Please note that this requirement can change from one transaction to another so do check! Second,When drafting or approving a transfer, you should bear in mind that: although the transfer should state that it is subject to the mortgage (identified by date and parties), it need give no details of the terms of the mortgage; the transfer need not state the amount of the mortgage debt. If it does, the figure should include both principal and interest at the date of completion, which you must check ; there should be no statement that all interest has been paid to date. Further obligations are set out in the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook which have to be followed by all firms on the LiveMore conveyancing panel

In the circumstances please clarify on the form what steps you have taken to discover the reasons behind cancellation of your LiveMore panel membership. In particular please provide details if you have received communications from the lender. E.G. before termination of your panel membership did you receive any letters or calls from the lender putting you on notice?

You would be advised to contact LiveMore to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook includes an explicit section for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. LiveMore in their Part 2’s state: It is likely that you will need to disclose the firm’s LiveMore solicitors panel reference.