Royal Bank of Scotland Conveyancing Panel Information

The Council of Mortgage Lenders is not a regulator and therefore will not advise on complaints against lenders. You can of course contact Lexsure to see if we can assist.

The Scottish Law Society has advised 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 Royal Bank of Scotland conveyancing panel. The suggestion 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 moneysavingexpert.com

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Royal Bank of Scotland 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 COLP 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 Royal Bank of Scotland 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 approved list of firms. Some Lenders now use CQS as the starting point for Panel acceptance such as HSBC.

You need to get in touch with Royal Bank of Scotland to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook has an express section for lenders to reveal who to contact to obtain standard documents. Royal Bank of Scotland in their Part 2’s state: You will need to disclose your Royal Bank of Scotland solicitors panel number.