Penrith 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 Penrith Building Society solicitor panel appointment.

The criteria to join the Penrith 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 lender panel status prior to accepting client instructions to act. The advice is lender-agnostic as it does not relate specifically to solicitors on the Penrith 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

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

• List of all those who fund the firm, including non-lawyers if applicable
• Full complaints history for each conveyancing solicitor
• House price discrepancies (declared to lender vs. registered at Land Registry)
• Whether any lender has ever made a claim against the firm’s PII cover
• Automated alerting to inform lenders when there is a fundamental change to the firm e.g. new disciplinary action
• Full disciplinary history for each licensed conveyancer
• Charge registration history
• List of all those staff who work within the conveyancing team
• Structure of firm and, where applicable, its group
• Full career history for each licensed conveyancer including registration date with Council of Licensed Conveyancers

During this period 5 sections of the BSA Mortgage Instructions were changed by Penrith Building Society. Some changes are more important than others but as a firm on the Penrith Building Society conveyancing panel you are of course obliged to comply with individual lender requirements. Locktons have recently pointed out in an article that non-compliance with lender requirements account for a number of high value claims, and it is therefore important to be aware of any particularly onerous terms that an individual lender may impose.

Remember: BSA requirements are not guidelines; they are the lender client’s instructions.

There are various requirements are to be followed if you wish to comply with your lender client’s instructions as set out in the BSA Mortgage Instructions. First, 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