Enact Direct Legal Solutions

I worked for Enact for 11 months commencing in October 2006. I have not personally used Enact to remortgage or buy/sell a house but I can give you an insight into how they operate.

Enact do the legal work behind residential conveyancing, remortgages and also now home information packs. I personally worked on the remortgage department as a Legal Assistant so my insight only truly applies to this department as I cannot speculate on how ...
...At Enact you can become a case handler/team player/legal assistant with no previous professional experience and no qualifications, and Enact proceed to train these people for 6 weeks on the remortgage process. Their training is very in depth and for everything new you learn you are immediately encouraged to put this into practice. Their training regiment is indeed very thorough, and it's surprising that all the "Legal Assistants" are not ... more

I worked for Enact for 11 months commencing in October 2006. I have not personally used Enact to remortgage or buy/sell a house but I can give you an insight into how they operate.

Enact do the legal work behind residential conveyancing, remortgages and also now home information packs. I personally worked on the remortgage department as a Legal Assistant so my insight only truly applies to this department as I cannot speculate on how residential conveyancing and HIPs departments processes work.

At Enact you can become a case handler/team player/legal assistant with no previous professional experience and no qualifications, and Enact proceed to train these people for 6 weeks on the remortgage process. Their training is very in depth and for everything new you learn you are immediately encouraged to put this into practice. Their training regiment is indeed very thorough, and it's surprising that all the "Legal Assistants" are not able to to their job to the standard that Enact would like.

Anyone who has dealt with Enact will probably confirm that you are led to believe someone with legal experience is putting through your remortgage - THIS IS NOT THE CASE! In about 95% of cases, there is actually very little legal work required prior to completion and most remortgages will go through with 21 days, the average amount of time agreed with most clients at Enact.

If, on the other hand you have an adverse issue that needs to be dealt with, this will inevitably hold matters up: for instance a 1:2 Transfer of Equity (where someone is brought onto the property, e.g. in cases of marriage or co-habitation) will probably take a week longer as we need to send an extra document to the borrower upon receipt of the initial ones which have been filled out. A 2:1 Transfer of Equity (where someone comes off the property, e.g. in cases of divorce) will probably take about a month longer than normal, usually due to involvement of solicitors and also having to send documents to 2 sets of borrowers. A Deed Of Postponement (where someone has a secured loan on their property they do not wish to repay) will probably delay your file by about two months. This tends to be due to lender response and turnaround times. Aside from those issues, most other issues will not be dealt with by Enact or will most definitely delay your file for months, so if you are requiring some other legal work to be done upon your property, you will be much safer to use a solicitor.

Note:
I have read the other 3 reviews on Enact that were here prior to this and I leave a response to the issues raised in those reviews (unbiased, I had good and bad times at Enact):

The structure of the company - the technical team, the legal team and the customer service department.
The customer service department are the telephone opertators who are the customer's first point of contact when ringing up, and depending on their experience may be able to deal with your query, but usually just give updates and make notes to guide the legal teams.
The legal teams are the actual individuals who maintain your case, deal with post, chase documents and set a completion date for your file. Not necessarily legally qualified
The technical services team is comprised of the oldest employees at Enact who are very familiar with all possible issues related to conveyancing. In cases where the legal teams are uncertain how to handle problem, this would then be referred to the technical services team.

A previous reviewer raised this as a problem because "On several occasions my file would apparently be with either the technical or the legal team and at this time appears to be totally inaccessible to the others, preventing them from doing any work on my case."

This is incorrect, the problem lies in the legal teams. Some people take their work very seriously and try to manage cases to the best of their ability and will ring borrowers back when requested whereas some will not. This is due to Enact hiring alot of graduates who see this job as a stepping stone to a training contract - they are not really bothered about doing the job, simply being in it. And if they are not pushed by team leaders to maintain all cases, easy or not, they will not be looked at for weeks at a time until the cases have changed.

Another problem is misinformation from the customer service department. Every client at Enact has a different procedure, and not all telephone operators are aware of every separate procedure, therefore will be advising you incorrectly. Customer service at Enact should be abolished and left to the legal teams.

As for the "admin manager for a firm of mortgage brokers" review, please note that brokers are as notorious at Enact as Enact is notorious with brokers. I personally found that brokers tended to pass the buck to Enact when they needed to contact their clients. My advice is, if you are using a solicitor, only then do you need a broker, but if a company like Enact is handling your remortgage, cut out the middle man, you are simply paying someone to ring Enact and ask them to do the job you are paying them for.

Overall, Enact does generally have alot of positive feedback, and for every 1 bad remortgage and unsatisfied customer, there are easily 10 good remortgages and satisfied customers. I think alot of how your remortgage is dealt with is simply due to the attitude of your case handler/legal assistant. If you are unlucky enough to experience a case handler who will only deal with their easy cases, your case will be delayed and no amount of chasing will help. Enact is generally quite good when it comes to chasing the easy documents, but again when it comes to the problem files where companies need to be chased for certificates, this is again down to your case handler.

Whereas if your remortgage was to be dealt with by a solicitor, your solicitor is a legal professional whose priority is to complete your legal work to the best of their ability, unfortunately at enact, your remortgage is dealt with case handlers/team players/legal assistants who are guided by a team leader - it is quite similar to the structure used in a call centre, and as many people know, the direction a call takes when you ring this kind of place is completely down to the operator you are allocated. The same is said for case handlers at Enact.

Another point to mention is that case handlers are given a productivity bonus at Enact of up to £350 which I believe also influences how your case handler treats your file. If your file has loads of problems, the case handler simply sees it as more work with no added reward - the completion of any remortgage, hard or easy is simply 1 productivity point, so case handlers do not strive to sort out harder problem files when they have many easier files ready to complete for the same productivity point.

There is a simple checklist for whether your should use Enact for your remortgage and it follows:

Are you with any of the following lenders:
Natwest, RBS, Barclays, Woolwich, HSBC, Halifax, Intelligent Finance, Nationwide, Abbey, The One Account or Cheltenham & Gloucester?

Are the people that currently own the property the ones you wish to be on the new mortgage?

Do you only have a mortgage on the property (no secured loans)?

Does your have no restrictions, cautions, notices on your property?

If the answer to any of these questions was NO... do not use Enact!

ALSO, don't bother if you bought your house from the council recently (e.g. last 2 years).

Hope this helped, abit long winded... but now you know everything I know about Enact! 

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