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The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has announced the most substantial revisions to the lender handbook in more than a decade.

33 sections of part 1 of the handbook (accounting for more than 10%) will see revisions - the most since the second edition of the handbook was launched in 2002.

In turn, the CML has instructed all mortgage lenders to update their specific requirements that form the part 2s and have promised that these changes will be available through their website from 1st December 2014.

Five years in the making, much has been made in the media recently of the MMR (Mortgage Market Review) and the changes that came into effect on the 26th April 2014. The need for a review was established in the wake of the financial crisis, during which time repossessions were rife and the irresponsibility of previous lending practices brought the credit market to its knees.

In providing innovative online services designed to reduce risk and improve efficiencies in property transactions for all parties, TM Group are well placed to take a look at what the MMR will mean for the property market.

A new whitepaper report on Mortgage Fraud has revealed that the majority of lenders surveyed consider 'solicitor negligence' to be the biggest fraud risk to their business.

The survey of more than 28 mortgage lenders shows that more than a third of the lenders fear 'solicitor negligence' but this can manifest in various forms and have serious consequences for the solicitor as well as the lender.

In a recent survey, mortgage lenders identified 'solicitor negligence' as the greatest risk to their businesses.

Mortgage fraud is a threat that is growing each year; in its 2013 Annual Fraud Indicator report, the National Fraud Authority estimated the annual loss attributed to mortgage fraud to be £1bn. Meanwhile, the SRA received 549 reports of bogus law firms in 2013, a 57 percent increase on the number from 2012.

Conveyancing is becoming marginalised by all parties within the property transaction, some solicitors believe. With many bulk conveyancing firms emerging in recent times, there is a concern that the profession is increasingly commoditised by those who can provide quick transactions at comparatively low prices.

Moreover, residential conveyancing attracts around 45% of all PII negligence claims and more than half of these claims are driven by the lender, whose ever-changing requirements ensure that adhering to the CML handbook remains a thorny task.

The debate, on whether personal searches are ‘worth the risk’ for solicitors, continues to rage, as it did most recently in the Conveyancing Quality Standard debate forum on LinkedIn. 

For many conveyancers, particularly those who have had a great many years’ experience in the profession, official searches are the ‘Gold Standard’. Certainly there is the perception that going straight to source reduces the risk of anything getting lost in translation.