Scottish Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

There are many reports available, five of which are as follows:

• Average time frame to send deeds to the lender (calculated from completion date or title registration)
• Evidence of undertaking logs
• Current and historic missed priority dates
• Disclosure/Notification to Lender analysis indicating frequency and nature of disclosures - to include benchmarking analysis against aggregate data
• The percentage of the firm’s business which is conveyancing (broken down into sale/purchase and remortgage)

The answer to this question really depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Scottish Building Society 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 Scottish Building Society conveyancing panel.

You need to be careful here as what you are intending may not be acceptable to the lender. It is possible that you (as a non-panel firm) or the mortgage applicant are not at liberty instruct a panel firm of your choice. Lenders such as Nationwide BS make it clear to their panel firms that where a non-panel member firm is instructed by one of their mortgage applicants, the lender must appoint a panel firm to carry out its instructions and to liaise with the borrower's conveyancing firm. You also need to make the costs implications and potential for delay very clear to your client.

Your insurance brokers are your best port of call to address this question. 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 Scottish Building Society solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You need to communicate with Scottish Building Society to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook has an individual question for lenders to enumerate who to contact to obtain standard documents. Scottish Building Society in their Part 2’s state: It helps to disclose the firm’s Scottish Building Society solicitors panel reference.