Newcastle 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 Newcastle Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA do not involve themselves in training although they do organise numerous general legal related conferences which are attended by firms on the Newcastle Building Society conveyancing panel. Lexsure intend to run specific lender focused seminars in the coming months including a webinar on Newcastle Building Society’s obligations . Law firms on the Newcastle Building Society conveyancing panel are welcome . Further details will be communicated as part of the LENDERmonitor change Notifications .

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

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

• SRA or equivalent regulator registration number where applicable
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing broken down into sale
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer
• Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)
• Full disciplinary history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Full disciplinary history for each licensed conveyancer
• Conveyancer client account(s) details
• Whether the firm is able to operate in other jurisdictions
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group

We can't comment specifically on Newcastle Building Society. Many major lenders are now introducing ‘file auditing’ as standard practice in relation to completed matters. This raises questions of confidentiality in relation to the borrower and the purpose to which the results of such audits will be put. The starting point is to remember that the file does not belong to your firm, it belongs to the ‘client’. But, of course, we will normally have two clients – the buyer and the lender - and you will owe a duty of confidentiality to each. So basically, you have to separate the file and just send the lender the parts solely relating to themselves. But, of course, as this will basically be correspondence with the lender, mortgage instructions etc.

Check with your Compliance Officer, but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the borrower client’s express consent – and if he is in arrears with the lender he is hardly likely to agree. However, if the lender can establish a prima facie case of fraud, then you may be under an obligation to disclose the whole file.

The emerging convention is that lenders are including an authority to disclose in loan application forms to counter this problem. Mortgage Express v Sawali, 2010 EWHC 3054 (Ch) indicates that such provisions valid? Please click here for more information about that case.

The BSA introduced it’s Mortgage Instructions in 2010 to ensure that licensed conveyancers or solicitors on a building society conveyancing panel had full access to a complete set of standardised mortgage instructions.

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 Newcastle 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 completing the answer.

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