West Bromwich Mortgage Company 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 Mortgage Company solicitor panel appointment.

The BSA is an association rather than a regulator and therefore will not advise on complaints against lenders. You can of course contact Lexsure to see if we can help.

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

Many estate agents are feeling the pain if their clients start out on the buying process using a solicitor who is not on the panel with the purchaser’s chosen lender. Many conveyancing firms are only discovering when they begin working on a case that they are no longer able to work with that lender. Given the inevitable resultant delays in the transaction the chances of an abortive deal increases dramatically. in the circumstances there is understandable anguish on the part of the estate agent as a result of the lost time should the client have to change solicitors lawyers.

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 West Bromwich Mortgage Company conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

• Firm name, address and contact details including all branches (including evidence of existence through risk-based physical visits and Google Streetview checks)
• Full complaints history for each licensed conveyancer
• Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society
• Whether the firm has ever knowingly accepted instructions on transactions involving Sale and Rent Back, Back to Back, Exchange and Delayed Completion and Lease Option, Below Market Value.
• List of all those staff who work within the conveyancing team
• List of all solicitors within firm
• Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes
• Solicitor client account(s) details
• Number of partners per branch of the firm
• SRA or equivalent regulator registration number where applicable

We can't comment specifically on West Bromwich Mortgage Company. 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 dispute 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.

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