Online search supermarket and conveyancing technology specialist, ETSOS [1], has published some useful guidance on how its ordering and quotation and referral systems can help conveyancers meet their compliance obligations.
Prepared by independent compliance consultant Michaela Hardwick, the advice note details the specific mandatory principles and outcomes within the SRA Handbook that ETSOS and its solutions automatically address. These range from ensuring firms ‘provide a proper standard of service’ and preventing ‘one’s independence to be compromised’ to having systems in place to monitor risk and to be compliant in relation to outsourcing agreements.
Phil Natusch, ETSOS’s managing director, explains why they have chosen to publish this advice now. “Post October 2011 and the introduction of Outcomes Focused Regulation (OFR) there’s been a growing interest in all things risk and compliance related. Conveyancing is not immune and more and more we’re hearing from firms, some on panels, some not, who are concerned that their reliance on a single search provider may give them issues in this respect. What we’re trying to highlight is that the ETSOS ‘search supermarket’ concept gives them an inherently compliant alternative – here market oversight is afforded by breadth and clarity of choice, consistent standards and processes are embedded in the ordering portal, and quality assurance is a by-product of our own due diligence on all our providers.”
The guidance paper can be viewed here [2]