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 recently embarked on a pilot programme of collecting information from residential conveyancing panel members. As part of the exercise, the bank requested copies of solicitors’ client account statements.

This gave rise to a risk that client confidentiality could be breached.

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

A spokeswoman for the bank said that the production of client account information was never mandatory.

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

To contact the Law Society’s Practice Advice Service, telephone 0870 6062522.