Conveyancing community rallies round Simplify

The conveyancing industry has rallied round the embattled Simplify Group as it deals with the aftermath of the systems outage it suffered last week. 

In a statement released on Wednesday the group confirmed it was the victim of a significant cyber security breach, advising it was “working with our third-party cyber specialists to restore systems, find ways to support our clients’ property transactions and undertake a thorough investigation to gain a fuller understanding of the incident.”

Many systems had been restored by midweek to enable the continuation of transactions and a notice on the website on Saturday 13th November said

IMPORTANT
We have now restored IT systems sufficiently to enable clients to move. The good news is that almost all contracted transactions with a fixed completion date are up to date.

We have been working non-stop and have substantially increased our customer relations teams to enable us to proactively contact almost all clients who are scheduled to complete. We had several days with minimal telephone capacity, but we now have around 300 colleagues making outbound phone calls to clients and this team, who will be working full-time, into the weekend, are calling every client with an update.

We would assure you that we have been working round the clock to restore our operations. This includes carefully bringing systems online as part of a secure phased approach and finding workarounds to complete transactions safely. This work continues and will not stop until we are fully up to speed again.

At all times we have been acting in the best interests of our clients and understand how challenging this situation has been for them and can assure them that all client monies held by us are safe.

Cook Taylor Woodhouse, who are also part of Simplify, are regulated by the SRA and operate on separate systems which have been entirely unaffected by this issue.

While members of the public have been understandably frustrated, many conveyancers have shared messages of support on LinkedIn:

“So feel for this firm/group, other firms need to think ‘there for the grace of god go I’. We need to support them as best we can.”

“I can’t imagine what these guys are going through! Could so easily be any of us. Fingers crossed for them now ????”

“Wouldn’t wish this on any firm”

One post which has wracked up over 300 likes and nearly 50 comments at the time of writing says:

“Conveyancing firms out there. Please show your support to PPL, JS law and Dc law (the simplify group). My heart goes out to these guys. This could happen to any of us. Unity across the trade is really needed. Let’s be kind. Let’s be helpful and let’s support these guys”

with Chief Business Development Officer Dev Malle responding

“Thank you Marie and everyone else for the great support. Really appreciated and never forgotten. Much classier to support and empathise when you are in the same industry rather than being short term opportunistic. Thanks again ????????”

On Friday the Council of Licensed Conveyancers released a statement advising that a team from the regulator had visited the Simplify offices on Friday to meet with the senior leadership team.

The meeting was to “review the steps they have taken to ensure transactions are completed and that client funds and data are protected.” The statement added that the CLC was

“reassured by the progress Simplify has made to date and by their plans for the remaining recovery work, however we will continue to monitor the CLC-regulated practices to ensure that client interests continue to be secured and that the CLC’s own regulatory requirements are met.”