Lloyds Conveyancing Panel Information

The criteria to join the Lloyds conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

We only know of a couple of banks that operate a separate conveyancing panel where the mortgage advance is over a certain threshold. You should nevertheless check directly with Lloyds. At one stage HSBC would only allow Sole practitioners to act for them where the mortgage was below £150,000. We are not sure if HSBC still operate such a condition. In your case it is best to check with Lloyds

The answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Lloyds 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 should give some thought to whether she/he needs to take any action as result of being removed from the Lloyds conveyancing panel.

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

The best placed professionals to answer this question are your insurance brokers. The chances are that on the basis that you have not been removed for fraud or negligence reasons that there will be little or no impact. The main reason why a firm would be removed off of a lender panel is due to low volume of conveyancing cases although there may be a number of criteria for Lloyds solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You would be advised to communicate with Lloyds to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook has a specific question for lenders to reveal who to contact to obtain standard documents. Lloyds in their Part 2’s state: It helps to disclose the firm’s Lloyds solicitors panel reference.