HM Land Registry is working with mortgage lenders to ensure they will no longer need to chase conveyancers for updates on the status of their applications at HMLR.
In a new pilot, HMLR will provide ten of the top mortgage lenders with data on the progress of their applications directly.
Last week HM Land Registry started providing lenders with direct access to their application data, showing the status of all applications to register their mortgage security, provided the lenders’ unique reference (known as an ‘MD’ reference) is entered into the application.
This will stop the chase process, where lenders and lender panel managers contact conveyancers routinely to understand the progress of their many applications to register mortgages.
A weekly update will be shared with each lender to ensure their information remains up to date. This pilot phase includes the ten mortgage lenders who represent the vast majority of the market, as well as two panel managers. If the pilot is successful, HMLR will explore the opportunity to extend it to other lenders with an MD reference. Mike Harlow, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Customer and Strategy at HM Land Registry said:
“Lenders want to know that their mortgages are either registered or in the proper process of being registered. This new direct service completes the picture of where the registration of their mortgage has got to. Now they do not have to chase conveyancers unless something is genuinely at risk. This should save the industry millions of pounds a year and give time back to conveyancers.”
Rob Stevens, Head of Property Risk at Nationwide Building Society, said:
“Getting direct access to mortgage application data is a breakthrough moment and is the culmination of many months of work between Nationwide, HM Land Registry and other lenders. It will really help to automate the unregistered charges process and save both lenders and conveyancers time by reducing the amount of back and forth between the two.”
A spokesperson for Yorkshire Building Society said:
“Conveyancing processes are notoriously complex, fast-paced and, sometimes, stressful, so any innovation which helps to make the process less time-consuming is to be welcomed.
We are constantly looking for ways to make our processes even more efficient for customers and are looking forward to experimenting with this new system and exploring how we can maximise its potential – which includes access to real-time Land Registry updates – to help with that.”
Charles Roe, Director of Mortgages at UK Finance said:
“This is a welcome initiative, which should improve the home buying and selling process for lenders, conveyancers and buyers. We look forward to working with HM Land Registry and the lenders involved in the pilot to help make this a success, with a view to rolling the system out more widely in due course.”
One Response
A step forward. But will the system work or will we receive even more angry messages from lenders when they tell us that they have looked at the system and the charge is supposedly not in for registration.
The best thing that the Land Registry could have done is to get these registrations finalised quicker and an automated message sent to the lender with a copy of the title immediately on registration. One does wonder if the time and money spent on this system could have better been spent in actually completing registrations.