Ever lost a settlement bank cheque?

Conveyancing is a serious adult game of pass the parcel. Come settlement you hand over the title and the other side collects the sale proceeds by bank cheque. Losing the title or losing the bank cheque comes at a cost.

Well only the other day we handed over settlement bank cheques and collected the title, transfer and discharge. Our firm personally handed over to the NAB a bank cheque for $53,317 being part of the funds required to settle.

Just before 5pm we get a phone call from NAB settlement department - "We have lost or misplaced the bank cheques; did our settlement clerk take the cheque(s) by mistake?"

We checked and no, our settlement agent did not have the cheques. Rightly so the NAB asked "Can you please stop the bank cheques?"

Next morning I went to the Commonwealth and without a problem they stopped the cheque and re-issued a fresh bank cheque for $53,317. Again all this comes at a cost, being time and bank charges and for the party losing the cheque the frustration and questions will I recover the lost money. I have sent NAB an invoice for our time spent in stopping and re-issuing the bank cheque on the 9th Jan, but funny thing is they haven't paid the invoice, thus I am still sitting on their funds pending payment.

Again when the era of electronic settlements and electronic registration of titles office dealings begins, such incidents as described will hopefully become a thing of the past