Guidance

Sign your mortgage deed: guide for mortgage lenders

Updated 7 March 2023

Applies to England and Wales

© Crown copyright 2023

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hm-land-registry-sign-your-mortgage-deed/sign-your-mortgage-deed-guide-for-mortgage-lenders

To use the Sign your mortgage deed service, you must be either:

  • working with a conveyancer who has developed their IT to work with the service, or
  • undertaking the conveyancing process in-house (in this case, you should also see the guide for conveyancers)

You must also be a member of a counter-fraud network or an organisation that has been notified to and approved by HM Land Registry (if in doubt, contact us).

Access to the service

You must agree a mortgage deed template with us. To do this, complete the digital mortgage: approval (e-ACD) form and email it to: commercialarrangements@landregistry.gov.uk.

You must submit a separate e-ACD for each type of digital mortgage you wish to have approved.

Once we receive your application, we will:

  • check the information provided
  • allocate a reference (an e-MD reference) that you or the conveyancer will need when creating each individual digital mortgage deed
  • send you a PDF of the mortgage deed template by email

Rewrite a paper deed

When submitting data for your template(s), you should remember that a digital mortgage is a new product, not just a replication of a paper deed. People read differently on the web than they do on paper, so your existing paper deeds might need to be comprehensively rewritten to work as a digital mortgage.

Digital mortgage template

In order to make conveyancing simpler, quicker and cheaper, we have standardised the digital mortgage template where possible, with extensive user-testing. It aligns with Government Digital Service standards as to content design.

Charging clause

With regard to the charging clause, we want to keep this simple, as borrowers have frequently told us they don’t understand it. The digital mortgage deed, therefore, has a standard charging clause. If you want to clarify what is charged by the charging clause, the clarification should go either in the additional provisions or in the mortgage terms and conditions.

Second charge mortgages

The service can be used only to create a mortgage that is in replacement for the borrower’s existing mortgage (a remortgage). The service cannot be used to create a second or subsequent charge.

Lenders using the service

Lenders currently able to use the Sign your mortgage deed service include:

  • Barclays
  • Coventry Building Society
  • Godiva Mortgages
  • HSBC
  • Nationwide Building Society
  • NatWest
  • Santander
  • The Co-operative Bank (Platform)
  • The Mortgage Works
  • The Royal Bank of Scotland
  • TSB
  • Virgin Money (Clydesdale Bank plc)

Contact

Contact us to find out more: digitalmortgages@landregistry.gov.uk.

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