Principality Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

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

• Buy to Let transactions
• Disclosure/Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• Current and historic missed priority dates
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)
• Average mortgage advance

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

For most lenders participation on the lender's panel of conveyancers is at the absolute discretion of the the lender. Many lenders reserve the right to accept or reject any application without giving any reason. You should check your original application to join the Principality Building Society conveyancing panel to see if you are entitled to a reason.

Assuming that your practice in is on the Principality Building Society conveyancing panel and you are instructed by them in relation to a leasehold property, you must report to them if it becomes apparent that the landlord is either absent or insolvent. If Principality Building Society are to lend, they may require indemnity insurance. In any event,you will need to check Principality Building Society’s specific requirements. Notwithstanding whether Principality Building Society will lend in such circumstances you still need to advise the borrower (unless you are acting for Principality Building Society alone) as to the risks of buying a property with an insolvent or absentee landlord.

The best placed professionals to answer this question are your insurance brokers. The chances are that on the basis that you have not been removed for fraud or negligence reasons that there will be little or no impact. The main reason why a firm would be removed off of a lender panel is due to low volume of conveyancing cases although there may be a number of criteria for Principality Building Society solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You would be advised to communicate with Principality Building Society to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook incorporates an individual question for banks to set out who to contact to obtain standard documents. Principality Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Don’t forget to quote the firm’s Principality Building Society solicitors panel reference.