Halifax Loans Conveyancing Lender Panel Compliance Tool

COMPLETIONmonitor is an online pre- and post-completion checklist for residential conveyancing lawyers. Supported by the Council of Mortgage Lenders and professional indemnity insures. It is a unique risk mitigation tool.

This software optimises the way you can prove to lender panels that you are, and can remain fully compliant with their instructions, with automatic updates on Halifax Loans’s changes. Even though using this technology is not a prerequisite for Halifax Loans , demonstrating you can stay up to date with Halifax Loans’s Handbook requirements is an excellent support to your panel application and, just as importantly, safeguard your firm’s panel standing.

COMPLETIONmonitor generates real-time alerts, automatically produces compliance and CQS reports, and will improve your firm's efficiency. It is also user friendly, cost-effective and, for many firms, results in a PII saving.

Find a Law Firm approved by Halifax Loans

Lenders often vary their requirements. The UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook requirements from Halifax Loans are not guidelines, they are instructions from a client. As with many clients, instructions can change - and they do change, over time:

A Timeline of Policy Changes


Since 2008, Halifax Loans has made 155 revisions or additions to sections of their version of the CML Handbook.
That equates to a section change every 17.6 days. In total, 19% of the sections of P2 of the UK Finance Lenders’ Handbook for Halifax Loans have been changed since 15/12/2008.

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Examples of recent questions relating to the Halifax Conveyancing Panel from members of the public

It has come to my attention via my mortgage broker that my the law firm I have appointed is not on the Halifax Solicitor panel. How can I check?
The best course of action for you to take is to contact your conveyancer. It is reasonable to expect your lawyer to advise you what has happened. If they are not on the panel they may recommend you to a firm that is on the the approved Halifax solicitor panel.
Our son is purchasing a newly built flat with a mortgage from Halifax. His conveyancer has said that there is a delay in completing the ‘Disclosure of Incentive Form’. What is this document - I have never come across this before?
The document is intended to provide information to the main parties engaged in the purchase. Therefore, it will be provided to your son’s lawyer who should be on the Halifax conveyancing panel as a standard part of the process, and to the surveyor when asked.

The Developer will be required to start the process by downloading the form and completing it.

The form will therefore need to be available for the valuer at the time of his or her site visit. The form should be sent to the Halifax conveyancing panel solicitor as early as possible, in order to avoid any last minute delays, and no later than at exchange of contracts.

Do lenders provide you with an approved list of solicitors? How do you know who is on the Halifax conveyancing panel?
The firms themselves provide us confirmation that they are on the Halifax conveyancing panel as opposed to being supplied with a list from Halifax directly.
The lawyers that I recently instructed on my purchase in Brighton has without warning closed. They were on acting for me because I had to have a lawyer on the Halifax conveyancing panel and my preferred lawyer was not. I paid them £200 on account. What are my options?
Assuming that you have an Estate Agent in the equation then let them know straight away so that they advise the vendors that there may be a slight delay due to reasons beyond your control. Hopefully they will be sympathetic and urge their lawyer to send a new set of papers to your new solicitors. You will need to appoint new lawyers that are on the Halifax conveyancing panel and notify the lender. If you have paid over any money it will hopefully be held by the SRA as money in an intervened firm's bank accounts is transferred to the SRA. Then, the SRA or the intervention agent looks at the intervened firm's accounts to work out who the money belongs to. To claim your money you will need to contact the SRA. If the SRA cannot return money you are owed from the firm's bank accounts, or if they can only return part of the money, you can apply to the Compensation Fund for a grant. Your new solicitors should be in a position to help
We were going to get a DIP from Halifax this week so we can work out what to offer on a property we like as otherwise we only have online calculators to go by (which aren't taking into account credit checks etc).Do the Halifax recommend a solicitor on the Halifax conveyancing panel, or is it better to go independently
You will need to appoint solicitors independently although you'll need to choose one on the Halifax conveyancing panel. The solicitor represents both you and the Halifax through the process.
On the whole I have been dissatisfied with the level or service received from my lawyer. Is there a Halifax conveyancing panel complaints department or do I complain directly to the law firm?
Complaining to Halifax about their conveyancing panel is unlikely to yield much of a response. All solicitors and conveyancer must have a complaints procedure. Usually one can find this information from the solicitor’s or conveyancer’s website or ask at their office. They must tell you about it if you ask.

The Legal Ombudsman will make sure that your complaint is addressed by the solicitor. It can also advise you how to complain.

If a licensed conveyancer does not have a complaints procedure or will not tell you about it, contact the Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC), which will make sure that your complaint is properly dealt with by the conveyancer. Please see below for more information.

At last I have had an offer on an apartment accepted, but there is a chain. The vendors have offered on somewhere, but not been accepted yet, and have viewings of other properties in the pipeline. My conveyancing solicitor has been instructed. What do I do now? At what point should I appy for the mortgage with Halifax?
It is usual to have concerns where there is a chain as you are unlikely to want to be too out of pocket too early (mortgage application is approx £1k, then survey/valuation, conveyancing search costs, etc). First you should check that your solicitor is on the Halifax conveyancing panel. As to the next stages this very much depends on the circumstances of your case, desire for this property and on the state of the market. In a hot mortgage some buyers would pally for the mortgage with Halifax and pay for the valuation and only if it comes back ok would they pay their solicitor to press on with searches.