Lloyds Banking Group will no longer ask its conveyancing panel members to provide client account information, after the Law Society raised concerns with the lender over the risk of breaches of client confidentiality.

The Society has advised firms that if any lender asks them for client account information, they should not provide it.

Instead, firms should contact the lender and advise them that they cannot breach the code of conduct, even if it were to put their panel membership at risk, the Society said.

Firms should also alert the Law Society and get further advice by contacting its Practice Advice Service.

Lloyds Banking Group had recently embarked on a pilot programme of collecting information from their residential conveyancing panel members.

As part of the exercise, the bank requested copies of solicitors’ client account statements. As these frequently contain client details, providing the statements to a third party could risk breaching client confidentiality.

The Law Society raised the issue with Lloyds, which acknowledged that it did not wish to put solicitors at risk of breaching the code of conduct.

A spokeswoman for the Group told the Gazette that the production of client account information was never mandatory.

She said: ‘We won’t proactively be asking firms for that information. It [the data collection exercise] is still a pilot and that is one of things that has been changed.’

Solicitors can contact the Practice Advice Service on 0870 6062522.