West Bromwich 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 West Bromwich Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

If you are a property lawyer and have a query about the mortgage instructions, you should make contact with West Bromwich Building Society. The BSA will not advise or comment on specific queries relating to West Bromwich Building Society or other lenders.

Criteria differ from lender to lender. We do not hold specific requirements relating to the questions raised as part of the application to be on the West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

• Full disciplinary history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Details of any accreditation e.g. Lexcel and/or Conveyancing Quality Scheme
• Number of lender conveyancing panels the firm is currently on
• Automated alerting to inform lenders when there is a fundamental change to the firm e.g. change of name
• Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes
• House price discrepancies (declared to lender vs. registered at Land Registry)
• Number of partners per branch of the firm
• Summary of annual accounts
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group

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 answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the West Bromwich 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 West Bromwich Building Society.

With lenders and solicitors working so closely together it is surprising that there has not been greater demand for the introduction of a bit of transparency regarding not just the figures for the West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel but for all mortgage panels

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