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.

The BSA, as is the case with the CML do not maintain copies of Specific Requirements. The BSA recommend you contact West Bromwich Building Society direct.

The BSA do not involve themselves in training but they do provided numerous useful legal related conferences which are attended by firms on the West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel. We do intend to run specific lender focused seminars in the near future including a webinar on West Bromwich Building Society’s requirements . Law firms on the West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel will be invited . Further details will be communicated as part of the LENDERmonitor change Notifications .

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

The Law Society of Scotland has suggested that solicitors should check their panel status with lenders prior to accepting client instructions to act. The advice is lender-agnostic as it does not relate specifically to solicitors on the West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel. The recommendation arises from the practice of a number of mortgage lenders who remove solicitors from their panels without prior notice as part of their panel management system, which can lead to some solicitors discovering this only once instructed. This is sensible advice as a client finding out midway through a transaction that their lawyer is not on the approved lender panel is very frustrating and can lead to complaints. Many online consumer forums contain posts where someone is complaining about finding that their lawyer is not on a lender conveyancing panel. Such forums include mumsnet.com

When a solicitor is acting for both West Bromwich Building Society and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent.

In your situation, if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender, the solicitor must cease to act for West Bromwich Building Society and it may well be prudent for you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You must not inform West Bromwich Building Society of the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your West Bromwich Building Society conveyancing panel status.

You have a number of obligations in this regard which you need to follow if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the BSA Mortgage Instructions. (a) You must take reasonable steps to verify that there are no discrepancies between the description of the property as compared to their old address.

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