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Eligibility - Company Licences

To be eligible for a conveyancer's licence a company must:

• have the prescribed minimum level of Professional Indemnity Insurance of $1.5 million
• have at least one director who is a licensed conveyancer
• have no director who is a disqualified person, as described under section 5 of the Conveyancers Act 2006
• have paid the prescribed application fee and the prescribed licence fee.

A company cannot be licensed if it is:

• under external administration
• the subject of an order by a body within or outside Victoria that disqualifies it from carrying on a conveyancing business

A company cannot be licensed unless it applies for and is granted permission if:

• it ceases to have at least one director who is a licensee
• it or one of it's directors has had a claim allowed against the Victorian Property Fund
• it has been found guilty of or convicted of an offence involving fraud, dishonesty, drug trafficking or violence which is punishable by imprisonment for 3 months or more
• one of it's directors is a person who has, within the last 10 years in Australia or elsewhere been convicted or found guilty of any offence involving fraud, dishonesty, drug trafficking or violence which is punishable by imprisonment for 3 months or more (whether or not a sentence of imprisonment was imposed).

Other important information before applying

The name of the conveyancing business

The name of the conveyancing business, whether it is the corporation or trading name must not incorporate the name of an unlicensed person or a name which could be confused with another existing conveyancing business. The BLA has the power to require the applicant to change the name of its conveyancing business and even refuse to grant the company a licence if in its opinion the name is not acceptable.

Restrictions on company licence

If a company only has provisionally licensed directors then the same restrictions will be noted on the company licence by way of a condition. To be consistent with the same restrictions placed on the provisionally licensed director(s) the company will not be authorised to carry out legal work involving the preparation of any document that creates, varies transfers or extinguishes an interest in land or give legal advice.