Simplify Group, certain IT systems of which went down on 7 November after expiring a security incident, reports that it has moved on from completing already exchanged transactions and is now in the next stage of system recovery.

The Council for Licensed Conveyancers (CLC) says that it has been “closely monitoring the incident” since it was reported by Simplify early on 8 November and has “received assurances about the steps that the firms are taking to protect their clients’ interests by safeguarding client money and working to progress transactions that were under way when the incident occurred, wherever possible.”

The firms affected comprise Premier Property Lawyers, JS Law, DC Law and Advantage Property Lawyers.

The CLC adds it is “also closely monitoring the operations of the involved firms and have outlined our expectations that Simplify ensures its clients’ interests are being protected and any disruption to individual clients and chains of house sales and purchases is being contained as far as possible.”

Approached for comment by Mortgage Strategy, Simplify provided an updated statement that reads as follows: “Following intensive, non-stop work, by our teams and outside experts, we have now moved on from completing already exchanged transactions, and allowing those customers to move, to beginning to exchange contracts on files that are ready to exchange and complete.

“We continue prioritising those transactions scheduled to complete this week, we are also now working on cases that are nearing exchange of contracts, with systems in place to progress them through to exchange and completion. We also now expect almost all remortgage completions to be up to date and be kept up to date going forward.

“While this is still taking a little longer than normal, we have already exchanged a significant number of contracts and we expect the number per day to increase steadily as the capacity of our restored systems builds.

“We also remain up to date on completing transactions that have already exchanged contracts and we expect this to continue going forward. And we would also continue to assure clients that all money held by us is safe and is held in an entirely separate system unaffected by the incident.”

Simplify continues: “Over the coming days we will be gradually resuming work across a larger number of our active cases, on a carefully prioritised basis, focused on helping our clients to move as soon as possible.

“At all times we have been acting in the best interests of our clients, understanding how challenging this situation has been for them.”