News / General

The following item has now been sent to us by the Clydesdale Bank

Clydesdale Bank contacted the Society earlier in the year to explain that they intended to put in place as open a conveyancing panel as possible in Scotland. The Bank’s stated policy was clearly in the best interests of both their customers and our members and in stark contrast to the approach adopted by many other lenders. To this end the Society agreed to provide the Bank with a dataset consisting of the names and addresses of all firms which according to our records deal with residential property. The contents of the dataset are publicly available, in a less accessible form, on our website under the “Find a solicitor” facility. The data provided to the Bank was intended to form the basis of their panel. 

After the Society provided the dataset the Bank then gave us very short notice of their intention to ask all panel member firms to send, as a precondition of panel membership, a standard letter of consent to disclosure of further information to the Bank by the Society. We raised concerns about the apparently wide scope of this consent and suggested amendments to the wording of the letter, only some of which were accepted by the Bank before it was issued to panel firms. We have since sought clarification from the Bank as to the scope of the information which will be requested from the Society. In any event, as a matter of policy, the Society will not disclose any confidential information relating to individual solicitors or firms to any third party, without a specific, direct request from the solicitor or firm in question, unless required to do so by statute or directed to do so by the courts.

The Society is continuing to engage positively with Clydesdale Bank to try to address its concerns.