Vida Homeloans Conveyancing Panel Information

What you should do largely depends on the reason that your firm has been removed off the Vida Homeloans 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 Vida Homeloans conveyancing panel.

The concern here is if you are expect to enter into ‘more onerous’ conditions that than the Handbook obligations. You have to try and take an objective view as to whether the Terms relating to the Vida Homeloans conveyancing appointment (or other terms for other lenders) are ‘more onerous’ than the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook Conditions. Depending on the Terms you may need to provide details on your renewal form. If you are in any doubt please call your broker to discuss before moving forward on this question.

When a solicitor is acting for both Vida Homeloans and borrower there is potential for conflicts to arise. You owe duties to both clients. All information received by you from your client is confidential and cannot be disclosed without the client’s consent. In the situation you find yourself in if the purchaser will not consent to the information being passed on to the lender the solicitor must cease to act for the Vida Homeloans and it may well be prudent you to cease to act for the purchaser as well. You can not tell the Vida Homeloans the reason for termination of the retainer over and above the fact that a conflict has arisen. The fact that you can no longer act should alert even the most somnambulistic of lenders that something is wrong with the borrower and/or purchase. The fact that you have disinstructed yourself should not affect your Vida Homeloans conveyancing panel status.

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

You should contact Vida Homeloans to obtain standard documents. The The Council of Mortgage Lenders Handbook has an explicit section for banks to cite who to contact to obtain standard documents. Vida Homeloans in their Part 2’s state: Please remember to disclose the firm’s Vida Homeloans conveyancing panel reference.