About CQS Conveyancing

In line with new CML Handbook changes Principality Building Society have updated their specific requirements relating to building insurance. As a conveyancer on the  Principality Building Society Conveyancing panel one needs to check the following:  You should also make reasonable enquiries to satisfy yourself that: 1. the insurance is in the joint names of us and the borrowers unless the property is leasehold and the lease requires the insurance to be in the landlord’s name, in which case our interest should be noted on the insurance policy. 2. The amount of building insurance cover is at least the amount referred to in the mortgage offer. If the property is part of a larger building and there is a common insurance policy, the total sum insured for the building must be not less than the total number of flats multiplied by the amount set out in the mortgage offer for the property. 3. The building insurance cover is index linked. 4. The following risks are cover...

I got asked yesterday by a potential buyer requiring conveyancing in Hendon whether Environmental Searches would show if Hendon is within the Hydrogen Network Expansion plan (LHNE) LHNE will deliver publicly-accessible, state-of-the-art fast-fill 700 bar hydrogen fueling station network together with new hydrogen vehicles in London, including a number of Hyundai hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and Revolve diesel-hydrogen dual fuel vans. The LHNE consortium comprises of Air Products, Cenex, Commercial Group, Element Energy, Heathrow Airport Ltd and Revolve Technologies Ltd and the project is co-funded by a grant from the UK’s innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board.  It is one of five research and development projects selected by the Technology Strategy Board in 2012 to help accelerate the adoption of energy systems using hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, bringing them into everyday use.  The Mayor of London and the Greater London Authority will play a supporting ro...

I’m a specialist in risk, so I can sometimes be accused of being a little conservative in outlook, even for a lawyer. But I suspect that this article will have people reaching for their thesaurus to find stronger words, like “worrier”, “pessimist” or even “doom-monger”. I’m sticking my neck out today to predict that 2015 is going to be the year of of the file review. And like the mythical Cassandra of Troy, I’m predicting that I’ll be roundly ignored and then proved right. Although unlike Cassandra, I hope to avoid insanity. And seduction by a god. There are a number of reasons why many files will come under the spotlight by lenders in the next twelve months: Regardless of whether and when interest rates move upward, experts predict a correction in the market. However small a correction that is, some borrowers will quickly find themselves in dire straits and we will see a slow but steady return to repossessions, although even I don’t foresee it being on scale of the early 90s...

Over the last few years, the SRA and  Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal  have taken disciplinary action against firms appear to have failed to comply with requirements to report key facts about transactions to lenders. The focus has been on significant failures to comply with CML Handbook requirements which, when followed, will reduce the risk of mortgage fraud. Failure to comply with these requirements potentially exposes the profession (as well as reputational) risk and in the case of Scotland to significant financial risk in the form of increased Master Policy insurance and Guarantee Fund claims and premiums. The SRA and SSDT appear to be taking disciplinary  action as a proportionate response to what appear to be cases involving significant risk. As far as I understand neither operate a policy to review all breaches of the CML Handbook. More recent disciplinary actions appear to feature firms demonstrating systematic failings. These involve a num...

Australian legal information services provider  InfoTrack  has signaled an aggressive global acquisition strategy with an agreement to acquire the largest independent property search company in England and Wales,  STL Group  PLC. According to Mr Wood, chief executive of InfoTrack, “Australia has a track record in developing new technologies then – for a range of well documented reasons - we end up selling the farm to overseas interests”. “We have developed a great business here and we are determined to keep it in Australian hands while at the same time enhancing our offering to the legal profession, not just in Australia but in key legal jurisdictions around the world,” he commented. Mr Wood went on to say that not only was the acquisition good for Australia, it will also deliver enormous benefits to STL clients with significant investment planned for STL’s technology platform. The STL business has been operating across the UK for over 40 years,...

Legal risk and compliance experts Lexsure are giving conveyancers a sneak-preview of the most extensive set of CML Handbook changes in twelve years. The Council of Mortgage Lenders notified Lexsure last month that they intend to publish important amendments to the CML Lenders’ Handbook for England and Wales on 1 December. The changes represent the largest number of revisions made to Part 1 of the Handbook since the second edition of the Handbook was published in 2002. In all, 33 sections, more than 10 % of the Handbook will be amended. It is anticipated that almost all lenders will update their Part 2 requirements on the 1st December or shortly thereafter. Examples of some of the Handbook sections to be changed include : 4.1 Valuation of the Property 5.5.1 Planning and Building Regulations 5.6.1 Good and marketable title 5.14.13 Leasehold Property 11.2 Signing and witnessing of documents 3.1 and 3.2 Safeguards for solicitors/conveyancers Lexsure have compiled...

Legal risk experts Lexsure will be giving conveyancers with AmTrust PI insurance an exclusive sneak-preview of the most extensive set of Handbook changes in twelve years. The Council of Mortgage Lenders have notified Lexsure that they intend to publish important amendments to the CML Lenders’ Handbook for England and Wales on 1 December. The changes represent the largest number of amendments made to part 1 of the Handbook since its latest edition was published in 2002. In all, 33 sections, more than 10 % of the Handbook will be amended. Lexsure approached strategic partners AmTrust Europe Limited, an ‘A’ rated insurance company, to offer webinar sessions for firms with AmTrust professional indemnity insurance policies. AmTrust, together with its brokers Howden and JLT Specialty, reacted promptly, and a series of exclusive webinars will take place in late November for the insurer’s client law firms. The live 40 minute webinars, including Q&A, will be hosted by Lexsure chief e...

In recent years a number of solicitors have been found guilty of professional misconduct after breaching the six month rule requiring conveyancing solicitors, to report any transactions in which the property being purchased/remortgaged has been owned by the owner or registered proprietor for fewer than six months. The rule, contained in the Council of Mortgage Lenders’ Handbook, is primarily designed to combat the potential for vendors to inflate the value of a property and commit fraud. The lenders’ instructions are clear – you must notify the lender under the ‘six month’ rule of that fact (subject to the stated exceptions) Yet lenders and PII underwriters often me that non-compliance with disclosure under the 6 month rule is still all too frequent. The recent case of E.Surv Ltd v Goldsmith Williams Solicitors [2014] EWHC 1104 serves as another reminder that a lawyer must perform the express obligations under the CML Handbook by undertaking a Land Registry search and by reading...

Was your firm - or more importantly were your clients - affected by the technical  issues experienced by  Bank of England yesterday? It is understood that many conveyancing transactions were delayed as a result of system problems with the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS) used by solicitors to transfer same-day mortgage payments during the property buying process. The Chaps system processes on average 5,000 conveyancing completions every day meaning that over 10,000 clients may have had their move delayed or put in jeopardy.   Quite aside from the stress to the clients (and individual lawyers) hundreds of COLPs will now be on call to decide if the delay to a client's completion should be considered and recorded as a 'minor breach'. Firms  must  provide services which protect their clients’ interests O(1.2) in a timely manner O(1.5). Each case needs to be decided on its merits. With...

Unanimity across the spectrum of law firm profiles is rare, yet 99% of law firms surveyed agree that The Law Society's view of endorsing only one or two case & practice management software suppliers is counterproductive. The Society's action may well lead firms to question the endorsement of Reliance and the merits of IT projects such as the Conveyancing Portal. An increasing number of firms are asking themselves whether the Society represents their interests  or is seeking to justify its own existence. In a recent survey 236 out of 237 senior representatives of over 200 law firms said they were opposed to the Law Society’s proposal to have one (or a very small number of) preferred supplier/s of case and practice management software. The members of the Legal Software Suppliers Association (LSSA) represent about 80% of the installed law firms market for IT systems in the UK.  They are concerned about a new initiative by the Law Society to engage in a process to choos...

Legal software house Lexsure have announced that in the three months leading up to 1st October over 120 firms upgrade their risk processes by  signing up to Lexsure’s conveyancing risk management products. Simon Seaton, CEO of Lexsure puts the growth down to the recent groundbreaking announcement by  AmTrust Europe Ltd whereby the  ‘A’ rated insurance company declared that for the first time an insurer would link the use of risk mitigation software with lower expenditure on professional indemnity (PI) premiums for law firms. Seaton commented ‘ COMPLETIONmonitor has previously been recognised as a valuable risk mitigation tool but AmTrust took the innovative step to reward firms that reduce their risk profile by using COMPLETIONmonitor in the conveyancing process. The reaction from firms who insure with AmTrust to  the  per case savings on their PI renewals for each case completed with the software has been tremendous. Even for small firms with active conv...

Conveyancing solicitors on the Rooftop Mortgages Conveyancing Panel can, as from today, carry out personal local authority searches as opposed to being required to carry out official searches. In a change to the lender's CML Handbook Part Two requirements the answer to section 5.4.5 ( Does the lender accept personal searches and, if yes, what are the lender's requirements? ) now reads : 'Yes provided the firm is registered with the Council of Property Search Organisations and subscribes to the Search Code monitored by the Property Codes Compliance Board and also that the requirements under sections 5.4.7 and 5.4.8 of Part 1 are met.' JP Morgan Chase Bank have made a similar change to the CML Handbook Part 2 section. The changes come hot on the heals of Lloyds deciding to amend its part 2 of the CML Lenders Handbook to recommend to lawyers on the Lloyds Conveyancing Panel that, when they are using personal searches, they should be supplied by subscribers to the...

Howden Windsor, the specialist Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) division of Howden Insurance  Brokers Limited, has announced an exclusive arrangement with software provider Lexsure which  could see law firms save thousands of pounds on their annual premium.  Howden Windsor clients who are insured by A-rated insurer AmTrust Europe can save money on their  Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) premium each and every time they use COMPLETIONmonitor,  Lexsure’s bespoke conveyancing risk management tool.  The online checklist has been designed specifically to reduce errors and omissions which may be  made in conveyancing transactions. This risk mitigation software is the first of its kind to be directly  linked to lower expenditure on PII premiums for law firms. With the average 2013/14 PII premium for 4 to 10 partner law firms at well over £50,000 and often  representing over 5% of firms’ gross fee income, PII is a significant e...

An observation from the trenches: Conveyancing lawyers aren’t very good as assessing risk. They tend to overinflate those that have the lesser ramification and underestimate those that pose a real threat. To be fair, they are in good company. Lots of business focus on risks that simply don’t exist or, at most, pose little threat. Does an airline pilot really need to surrender his tweezers at airport security when he's about to board an aircraft equipped with an axe on the back of the cockpit door? Can a mobile phone really cause a major explosion at a petrol station? Many a lawyer would think that the  exposure to claims results from a drafting error or  lack of knowledge.  Insurance company research,  however, shows that just one in eight claims against law firms arises from lack of legal knowledge, while one in three claims is sparked by seemingly small mistakes in ‘legal housekeeping’. One only needs to review the latest question identified on PI renewal for...

Can conveyancing be better risk managed? To a room full of lawyers, the answer to this question is so obvious that you would be forgiven for feeling silly for asking it. However, sit opposite a law firm owner and you may find that they are far more comfortable responding “no”. Yet more than that, it would likely be followed with the statement that “it’s most other firms which are in need of better risk management, not us.” Better risk management is for others. The difficulty with risk analysis conducted by solicitors for themselves is that it to be done right it requires an objective perspective; which, by definition, is an impossibility. Just as Snow White’s tormentor got the same self-sure answer when she asked “Mirror, mirror, on the wall...”, for most solicitors, it's a foregone conclusion. This surprises me because there's just so much evidence to the contrary. But, don’t just take my word for it, ask PI Insurers. Residential and commercial conveyancing wo...

Legal risk software house Lexsure  and AmTrust Europe Limited, an ‘A’ rated insurance company, have signed a groundbreaking agreement that for the first time links the use of risk mitigation software with lower expenditure on professional indemnity (PI) premiums for law firms, a move that could be worth tens of thousands of pounds for some firms. Professional indemnity premiums are a great concern for law firms, as, particularly for smaller firms, they can constitute one of the largest costs to the business aside from salaries. Furthermore, a practice that is refused PI cover can be forced to go out of business, a fate that befell some firms in England and Wales last year. Now, for the first time, law firms can evidence their lower risk profile for conveyancing transactions by using Lexsure's COMPLETIONmonitor software, an online checklist, tailor-made for conveyancers to reduce and eliminate errors and omissions. COMPLETIONmonitor has previously been recogn...

As the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has identified money laundering as one of the two biggest current risks to law firms, it’s worth reviewing how COMPLETIONmonitor’s Anti-Money Laundering Search module helps law firms spot and mitigate the risk in conveyancing transactions.  AML Search is a powerful and robust online anti-money laundering and identity verification service. With the underlying data provided by Equifax, COMPLETIONmonitor have access to a range comprehensive and in-depth information that gives law firms an effective tool to tackle the threats presented by money launderers and terrorist financiers. The risk itself is not new, but the “the techniques used and the context in which it takes place are constantly changing and becoming ever more sophisticated”, according to the regulator. That’s why the SRA has made a priority risk of money laundering stemming from inadequate systems and controls over the transfer of money.  In short, COMPLETION...