Scottish Building Society Conveyancing Panel Information

No such training is arranged by the CML but they do organise a number of general legal related conferences which are attended by firms on the Scottish Building Society conveyancing panel. Lexsure intend to run specific lender focused seminars in the near future including a webinar on Scottish Building Society’s Part 2 obligations. Law firms on the Scottish Building Society conveyancing panel are welcome. Further details will be made available as part of the LENDERmonitor P2 change Notifications.

The requirements to join the Scottish Building Society conveyancing panel is likely to be fairly detailed and is unlikely to include signing up to LENDERmonitor alerts.

One might ordinarily expect Scottish Building Society via their Part 2 requirements to address this but the Handbook is silent on deadlines to send deeds. You need to look at the Terms of Scottish Building Society’s Conveyancing Panel Appointment that you entered into. For many lender's these Terms have a provision such as: ‘To keep us informed of the reasons for any delay in your being able to send the title deeds and documents we require to us within 3 months of completion or evidence of proof of registration within that period. (We will send reminders if the deeds have not been received but will not acknowledge receipt of deeds’ It is important to keep Scottish Building Society informed. Law firms can often compound their problems by not communicating with the lender when there is a delay or problem.

You will be aware of the trend in recent years for lenders such as Scottish Building Society 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 Scottish Building Society panel. The situation that you find yourself in is where your client’s purchaser has his/her own lawyer and Scottish Building Society 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 Scottish Building Society’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 Scottish Building Society. You will no doubt be required to undertake directly to Scottish Building Society’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 Scottish Building Society 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 Scottish Building Society solicitor panel membership. Please remember that it is always important that you complete your insurance forms accurately.

You should communicate with Scottish Building Society to obtain standard documents. The CML Handbook includes an express inquiry for banks to establish who to contact to obtain standard documents. Scottish Building Society in their Part 2’s state: Please remember to quote your Scottish Building Society solicitors panel number.