Special conditions agent, conveyancer review workflow

Overview

A UK conveyancing group had spent around two years trying to automate one check, finding the special conditions in every mortgage offer. Every offer still needed a qualified person to work through it, and with the team already at capacity, more work meant more people. We took that one check, built an agent to do it, and now run it alongside the systems already in place. The agent does the finding. The group's conveyancers make every decision. The goal was more capacity, not fewer conveyancers.

The Problem

Fewer conveyancers, more files, and every mortgage offer still read line by line.

Conveyancing firms are being asked to do more with fewer people. In England and Wales, the number of solicitors working in residential conveyancing fell 15% between 2021 and 2025, while each firm is handling more transactions. Firms can no longer grow by hiring alone. This group has to check every mortgage offer it handles for special conditions, the requirements a lender sets that the buyer must meet. Some lenders put them under a special conditions heading, others under additional obligations, and no two word them the same way. No automated approach could handle that variation. Every offer went to a person. Getting it wrong is costly. Miss one condition, and the firm hasn't followed the lender's instructions. Caught late, it can delay the transaction while the lender reviews or changes the offer. Missed altogether, it may go unnoticed until long after completion, by which point the client was never told what their mortgage required and the lender has grounds for a claim against the firm. Lenders look at a firm's claims record when deciding who stays on their panels. One missed condition is a problem with a file. A pattern of them is a problem with a panel, and losing a panel means losing that lender's work. That's why the checking stayed with the people the group had hired for their judgement. The work got done. But it got done by the wrong people, and with no spare capacity, it limited how much more the team could take on. Every qualified hour spent reading an offer was paid for twice, once in salary and again in work the team had no room for. Busy months made it harder still, because the same team had to absorb every peak in the market.

The Solution

One agent. One job. Every special condition found, and shown exactly where it sits.

We didn't build another tool for the team to drive. We built an agent to own that one check. We started by mapping the check as the group already runs it, and agreed what success would look like before any build work began. The brief that came out of it was narrow by design. Read each mortgage offer, find every special condition, and show the conveyancer exactly where each one sits. Nothing more. The agent is trigger-based. When an offer arrives, it runs the same bounded sequence of steps, whatever the lender's layout or wording. It makes only the decisions the group has defined, against rules it has agreed. It doesn't interpret conditions or decide what happens next. The judgement stays where the liability sits. Every finding comes back as a structured list, ready for review and linked to its place in the offer. The conveyancer checks. They don't search. Anything outside the rules goes to a person. The results don't sit in a separate tool. The agent passes every finding straight back into the case management system the group already uses, so conveyancers see it where they already work. No new system to log into. No new place where client data is stored. That's what makes it safe inside a regulated firm. Each finding links to its source, so the record exists from the moment the work is done, not rebuilt when someone comes to review the file. We operate the agent and monitor every output, and it's built on Microsoft Azure, with data kept in Europe. Nothing to replace, and no migration project to fund.

The Impact

Two years of looking. A matter of weeks from first meeting to full test.

We tested the agent on more than 100 real mortgage offers that had already been checked by hand. It found 99.9% of the special conditions without a single false match, and read the whole batch in under an hour. Then we tested it on offers it had never seen. It was just as accurate. At volume, accuracy matters as much as speed. An agent that's fast but wrong only creates more work. Every condition it finds can be dealt with before it becomes a problem. Before, every extra offer needed more qualified time. Now the agent finds the conditions, and qualified time goes back to qualified work. Every offer gets the same check in every firm in the group. That changes how the group grows. The agent isn't there to replace conveyancers. It's there so the same team can take on more. Volume can increase without the cost of checking it rising too, and headcount no longer sets the limit. When the property market peaks, the group doesn't have to hire for its busiest months or turn work away. The work can grow faster than the team. Buyers benefit too. Conditions found early can be explained before completion, not discovered long after it. These are test results, not live ones. They're the standard the agent now has to meet every day, and we're accountable for every output. The group has access, and its own acceptance testing is next.