Scottish Widows Conveyancing Panel Information

The Law Society of Scotland’s opinion is that lenders such as Scottish Widows are free to choose whom to instruct, and there are no competition issues unless a lender (or a number of lenders acting together) has a market share above 40%. Even Lloyds Banking Group doesn’t come near to 40%. Removal from the Scottish Widows solicitors panel would therefore not be anticompetitive.

Depending of the nature of the breach yes. Only last year the Tribunal, having considered the a complaint at the instance of the Council of the Law Society of Scotland against Peter MacIntosh Aikman, Solicitor, Messrs Aikman Bell Solicitors, 19 Cadzow Place, Edinburgh; The SDDT found the Respondent guilty of Professional Misconduct in respect of; his breach on two occasions of Rule 6 (1) of the Solicitors (Scotland) Accounts Etc Rules 2001, his breach of his client’s specific instructions, his breach on five occasions of paragraphs 5.1.1, 5.1.2 and 5.10.3 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook, his breach on one occasion of paragraph 5.9.1 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook, his breach on two occasions of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook paragraph 5.8, his breach on four occasions of the Birmingham Midshire’s specific stipulations that cases where the seller has owned the property for less than 6 months and back to back transactions were not acceptable. The Respondent was fined £1000 as well as being liable in the expenses of the LSS and of the Tribunal.

The CML do not retain historic copies of P2 requirements pre-December 2010. The Council of Mortgage Lenders advise that you contact Scottish Widows directly.

Lexsure has not been advised of any intention on the part of the CML to develop such a search facility.

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

• 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 that is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)
• Average mortgage advance
• Buy-to-let transactions
• Disclosure/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.existing/new/seen in person)