Birmingham Bank Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is not a regulator and therefore cannot investigate grievances against lenders. You can of course contact Lexsure to see if we can assist.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders, along with Birmingham Bank and other stakeholders developed a standard set of requirements where a conveyancer is representing a lender such as Birmingham Bank alone in a residential conveyancing transaction. These legal instructions are contained at Part Three of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook and are to be followed in conjunction with Sections One and Two. The CML have published an example requirements letter to the borrower’s conveyancing solicitor for use by the lender's conveyancer, and sets out to the borrower's conveyancer, the documentary and information requirements of the lender's panel conveyancer.

We can't comment specifically on Birmingham Bank. 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 buyer client 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 COLP but a firm should not send the complete conveyancing file without the buyer client’s express consent – and if he is in dispute with the lender she 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 are valid. Please click here for more information about that case.

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

CQS membership gives no guarantee to lender panel acceptance. Nevertheless the Council of Mortgage Lenders have indicated that it is likely to become a prerequisite for firms wishing to join their approved list of conveyancing solicitors. A number of mortgage companies now use CQS as the starting point for Panel acceptance as is the case with HSBC.

You would be advised to communicate with Birmingham Bank to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook incorporates an individual section for banks to cite who to contact to obtain standard documents. Birmingham Bank in their Part 2’s state: It is likely that you will need to quote the firm’s Birmingham Bank conveyancing panel reference.