Title companies move toward paperless system

While the true paperless office is still a distant dream, Fidelity Title Agency of Springfield is ahead of the curve in the area of posting closing documents on the Web for its customers. Bob Clinkenbeard, manager of Fidelity Title, said that for the most part, title business is still done the old-fashioned way.

“Our title books go back to the 1800s, and only one other title service in Greene County goes back that far and that’s Hogan Land Title,” he said. “When we search the title records in preparation of issuing a title commitment for insurance, we go back to the books and read all the pages to see what’s been recorded on the property, and then we type the commitment. The next step would normally be to take or fax copies of the commitment to all the parties involved.”

That step of physically distributing copies was all but eliminated in August, when the agency added a module called TransactionPoint, a Web-based document-posting program, to the SoftPro document-management software it has been using since 2000. SoftPro is owned by Fidelity National Information Services, a subsidiary of the agency’s Jacksonville-Fla.-based underwriting company, Fidelity National Title Insurance Co.

“We’re trying to do away with the fax machine because it wastes time and paper,” Clinkenbeard said. “Once the settlement papers and other transaction documents are finished, we can now scan them and post them on our password-protected secure site. An automatic e-mail then goes to our customers, who are real estate agents and lenders, to let them know the documents have been posted. Authorized users can view the documents at any time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

April Haynes, closing coordinator for Ethel Curbow of Coldwell Banker Vanguard, Realtors, is impressed with what Fidelity is doing.

“I love it,” Haynes said. “Instead of waiting, I can go online to see the documents during my downtime. I download the documents and then print what I need, or e-mail them to my clients. E-mail is a lot clearer than faxes.”

Many real estate agents work at night and often at home, making accessibility and convenience precious commodities to them and their customers.

“It just makes things easier,” said Diane Nicholas, Realtor and broker associate with Murney Associates, who has been using Fidelity’s closing services for the past five years. “Now, at 8 o’clock at night, I can e-mail my clients and I’m done.”

Hogan Land Title Co., which also uses Fidelity National Title Insurance Co. as its underwriter, installed SoftPro at about the same time as Fidelity Title Agency and is training staff on TransactionPoint.

“We expect to have TransactionPoint in use after the first of the year,” said Sarah Semro, marketing director for Hogan Land Title.

Aaron Jernigan, president of mortgage banking at The Signature Bank, said Fidelity’s online system saves time and doesn’t tie up the fax machine.

“When we order title work from Fidelity, they e-mail us when the documents are ready to view online,” Jernigan said. “Our processors log onto a secure site to download the title work and the settlement papers.”

But some title companies still rely on faxes to do business.

Joni Watkins, president and owner of Preferred Title of Missouri Inc., also uses SoftPro, but not TransactionPoint.

“I’m using only a portion of the package because I’m a small company,” she said. “I still use the fax a lot because not many of my customers order title insurance online.”

Her underwriting company, Stewart Title Guaranty Co. of Houston, uses a system called SureClose, developed by its subsidiary, Stewart Realty Solutions.

Lincoln-Evans Land Title purchased a product for Web-based posting of closing documents from RamQuest Software Inc. of Plano, Texas approximately one year ago. “We’ve been so busy we haven’t been able to get it up and running,” said Lincoln-Evans President Kelly Jones.

He said the program is approved by four of the five underwriting companies he works with. “We’ve haven’t asked the fifth one,” he added.

In the title business, technology is way ahead of deployment, according to Tim Conley, SoftPro’s vice president of sales.

“We have more than 10,000 customers and only 3 percent of them have deployed the complete management platform,” he said. “That’s because the training to deploy the platform is labor-intensive. There is a lack of understanding of the benefits, and our customers cannot always absorb the costs.”

Fidelity Title of Springfield paid an initial fee, which Clinkenbeard declined to disclose, for the software and training, and the company pays $2 for each file it posts online.

But customers aren’t footing the bill for the online access.

“We’re adding value to our services by providing additional benefits to our customers at no additional cost to them,” Clinkenbeard said.

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