Managers Newsletter September 2018

Manager newsletter

This newsletter is for managers and heads of practice at CLC licensed entities. It focuses on issues of compliance with the CLC’s Regulatory Arrangements and the management of your firms as well as matters of particular concern to those with managerial responsibilities.

AML Webinar

We have published our webinar on Anti Money Laundering which gives advice and guidance on new material we have published on our website along with insight gained from recent Practice inspections. It looked at the sector risk assessment for conveyancing and gave tips to firms on how to produce their own risk assessment.

AML Resources

We have created a new AML toolkit on our website which brings together rules, guidance, advice and resources to support you compliance with AML requirements. This is the first of what are planned to be a series of toolkits and we would appreciate any feedback you have on this first one to clc@clc-uk.org

CLC qualitative research – request for assistance

We will soon be commissioning some qualitative research that will seek to better understand client understanding of the conveyancing process and their confidence that it delivers the outcomes that it should. We are now starting to recruit potential interviewees and are asking licensed Practices to assist with identifying people to be approached.

We are looking for individuals split between first time buyers and more experienced buyers and within each of these 2 groups by whether a conveyancing transaction has fallen through or experienced no problems – all to be from instructions from March 2018 onwards.

Please contact us at jons@clc-uk.org if you can assist.

Annual Regulatory Return

There are a few remaining returns required for the Annual Regulatory Return exercise. RSMs will be in contact with those firms who have not yet complied and you are reminded that participation is mandatory.

Digital escrow webinar

We are co-hosting a webinar, in conjunction with Central Law Training, in which representatives from Shieldpay and Premier Property Lawyers will discuss the trial of a digital escrow system for the transfer of funds in property transactions. They will be talking about the key challenges and risks facing conveyancers in relation to the management of transaction funds, their experience of trialling a digital escrow system and the potential benefits of the approach for conveyancers and their clients. During this live webinar, you will be able to pose your own questions to the speakers.

The webinar takes place on Wednesday 12 September, from 1-1.30pm. To find out more and book your complimentary place, visit https://www.clt.co.uk/webinar/digital-escrow-in-conveyancing-live-webinar/.

Quick guide to Acting as Ancillary Insurance Intermediaries

We have published a quick guide to the Acting as Ancillary Insurance Intermediaries (AAIIC) which is intended only as an introduction to AAIIC and to help you understand the nature of the changes which are being introduced on 1 October 2018.

Access to Government Gateway on 10 September 2018

HMRC has issued an alert about a possible issue with access to the Government Gateway on Monday 10 September 2018.

The message from HMRC is:

As part of the work needed to update and enhance the Government Gateway, we are changing the location of a number of Agent User Interfaces on 10 September 2018. This may result in users who attempt to access pages being presented with a blank screen, page that can be read but not updated or a message advising them to proceed to a different link.

In any of these scenarios, users should access the following link where they will be able to log in and proceed as normal: www.tax.service.gov.uk/client-management/clients.

We apologise for any inconvenience this causes users.

Twitter

If you or your firm are on twitter we would encourage you to follow us @CLConveyancers where we post useful information supporting compliance, amongst other things from us and trusted partners.

We hope that you find this newsletter useful and we would welcome feedback. Just write to us at clc@clc-uk.org