Marsden Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

Unlike the CML the Building Society Mortgage Instructions deal with this. Section A.12 states ‘In order to act on our behalf your firm or company must be a member of our conveyancing panel provided we are a society that operates one – see specific requirements for details of our arrangements. The Special Requirements state:

You must also comply with the terms and conditions of your Marsden Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA Mortgage Instructions state that the firm must keep the file for at least 6 years from the date of the mortgage. Data imaging is normally suitable compliance with this requirement. As a firm on the Marsden Building Society conveyancing panel you must allow Marsden Building Society to conduct such reasonable audit of your information security measures as Marsden Building Society or their agents may to ensure your compliance with your file retention obligations.

The feeling from lenders generally (we can not speak for Marsden Building Society specifically), is that for too long solicitors have concentrated on their duty of care to their purchasing client, and have paid scant attention to the duty they owe to the lender, whom they conveniently forget is also their client.

Looking from the lenders’ perspective, it has to be said that there are pressures to encourage smaller panels. The Financial Services Authority regards the open panel system as a major contributor to mortgage fraud and negligence cases, and has been leaning on lenders to move to proactive panel management, which is more expensive the larger the panel. Hence it is becoming more common for lenders to charge fees, and/or require extensive form-filling, from would-be panel members

Marsden Building Society and other BSA lenders are in varying stages of reviewing their approach to vetting firms on their conveyancing panels, to ensure their ongoing exposure to unsuitable firms is reduced.

The CLC has initiated discussions with lenders and their representative bodies to see whether and how the risks that lenders wish to mitigate could be addressed through the regulatory framework rather than ad hoc arrangements that can differ from lender to lender. It is likely that that the CLC have been in touch with lenders such as Marsden Building Society as well as the CML

There are many reports available but examples include:

• Average time frame to register charges at the Land Registry
• Average time frame to send deeds to the lender (calculated from completion date or title registration)
• Number of conveyancing cases by lender
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale)
• Average mortgage advance
• Buy to Let transactions
• Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• Evidence of undertaking logs
• Current and historic missed priority dates
• Analysis as to the nature of clients (e.g. new client )

The answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Marsden 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 needs to consider whether he or she needs to take any action as result of being removed from the conveyancing panel of Marsden Building Society.

The key here is the caveat ‘more onerous’.

You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the Marsden Building Society conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the BSA Mortgage Instructions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before moving forward on this question.

BSA lenders do not come within the top 20 lenders in terms of frequency of questions. The most popular lender panels in terms of questions are as follows:

• Santander Conveyancing Panel
• National Westminster Bank Conveyancing Panel
• Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel
• HSBC Conveyancing Panel
• Lloyds Conveyancing Panel