Intelligent Finance Conveyancing Panel Information

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 Intelligent Finance conveyancing panel. Typically lenders need to have full knowledge of a firm including (but not limited to):

Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers

and Conveyancing Quality Scheme

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

List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable

Whether the firm has ever accepted instructions in respect of property clubs and investment schemes

Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group

Solicitor

Full career history for each solicitor including admission date to the relevant Law Society

In operating open conveyancing panels, lenders such as Intelligent Finance face a number of fraud and negligence risks. While there is no authoritative source of data on lender exposure to solicitor–led mortgage fraud, anecdotal evidence from lenders indicates exposure on individual cases are often in the millions of pounds. The National Fraud Authority estimates that £1bn per year is lost in mortgage -related frauds in total, which is seen as a conservative estimate.

These risks are exacerbated by the lack of a comprehensive set of data on all conveyancing firms (which, for the avoidance of doubt, would include solicitors and conveyancers across the UK) which is in a readily accessible format. Currently, lenders vet the suitability of their panel firms against a variety of disparate, incomplete and potentially inaccurate sets of information. One top 5 lender pointed out to us that it is almost impossible to track individual fraudsters who move from firm to firm, especially where they are no longer registered or no longer hold a valid practicing certificate.

Intelligent Finance and other lenders are in varying stages of reviewing their approach to vetting firms on their conveyancing panels, to ensure their ongoing exposure to unsuitable firms is reduced. There is also regulatory impetus on lenders to ensure that they have satisfactory oversight of their third party panels, including a due-diligence process.

As is the case with the Law Society the CLC has entered discussions with banks and their representative bodies to see whether and how the risks that lenders wish to mitigate could be addressed through the regulatory framework rather than via ad hoc arrangements that can differ from lender to lender. It is likely that that the CLC have been in touch with lenders such as Intelligent Finance as well as the BSA.

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

CQS membership is 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 remain on their panels. Some mortgage companies now use the Conveyancing Quality Scheme accreditation as the starting point for Panel approval as is the case with HSBC.

You need to get in touch with Intelligent Finance to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook includes an explicit section for banks to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Intelligent Finance in their Part 2’s state: Always remember to disclose your Intelligent Finance solicitors panel reference.