The Claims Department recently paired up with the Ronald McDonald House Charities as part of their annual campaign to give back.

Ronald McDonald House Charities provides support to children and their families at hospitals worldwide by providing a place to stay, and home-cooked meals, at little or no cost.

This service allows families to focus on the health and healing of their child, instead of having to worry about groceries, shopping, cleaning and cooking.

The Claims Team paid a visit to the Ronald McDonald house in Orlando and prepared a home cooked meal of tacos with all the fixins. Photos from their time volunteering in the kitchen are on display in the slideshow below.

Ronald McDonald’s policy is that no family is ever turned away — fees are waived for families that cannot afford to make a donation.

Please visit the donation page to give to your local Ronald McDonald House Charities chapter, or to other chapters located across the globe.

Alliant National’s Jeff Stein and Mark Szenas recently presented at the 2018 Florida Agency Network Staff Seminar in Tampa, Florida.

Because we don’t compete with our agents, “ZERO is the number of direct operations or agencies owned by ANTIC in the entire nation”, said Jeff Stein, Alliant National Southeast Regional Counsel and Senior Vice President.

We celebrated with Keven Graham and Suncoast One Title & Closing, Inc., for being a First Place Winner of Best of Charlotte Readers’ Choice Award and for being an Alliant National Top 10 Agent in Florida!

Do you think your pet can capture the festive spirit and child-like wonderment of the holiday season as well as this pair of domestic shorthairs?

Submit a photo of your pet enjoying the holiday season to marketing@alliantnational.com for a chance to win a prize.

Photos will be uploaded to a photo album on the Alliant National Facebook page as we receive them, and fans of the page will have a chance to vote for their favorite photo. You can invite your Facebook friends to vote for your favorite entry also.

The contest runs now through December 31 and is open to Alliant National staff only. The sooner you submit your photo, the sooner you can start campaigning for votes for your submission.

Alliant National’s Michael Rubin, NTP accepted into Forbes Business Development Council

Criteria for acceptance include track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, personal achievements

LONGMONT, Colo. – Michael Rubin, NTP, vice president of business development for Alliant National Title Insurance Company (Alliant National), was recently accepted into Forbes Business Development Council, an invitation-only community for senior-level sales and business development executives.

Rubin was vetted and selected by a review committee based on the depth and diversity of his experience. Criteria for acceptance include a track record of successfully impacting business growth metrics, as well as personal and professional achievements and honors.

“We are honored to welcome Michael Rubin into the community,” said Scott Gerber, founder of Forbes Councils, the collective that includes Forbes Business Development Council. “Our mission with Forbes Councils is to bring together proven leaders from every industry, creating a curated, social capital-driven network that helps every member grow professionally and make an even greater impact on the business world.”

As an accepted member of the Council, Rubin will connect and collaborate with other respected local leaders in a private forum. He will also be invited to work with a professional editorial team to share his expert insights in original business articles on Forbes.com, and to contribute to published Q&A panels alongside other experts.

“I’m extremely excited to be selected to the Forbes Business Development Council” said Rubin. “This is an outstanding opportunity to work with other business development and sales executives. I believe that my position on the Forbes Business Development Council will allow Alliant National to better serve our Independent Agent partners by providing new insights into our ever changing business landscape.”.

Visit alliantnational.com/newsroom for additional information.

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MEDIA INQUIRIES

Cathie Beck
Capital City Public Relations
e : cathie@capitalcitypr.com
p : 303-241-0805

About Alliant National Title Insurance Company

The Independent Underwriter for The Independent Agent®, Alliant National believes in putting other people first. The company protects the dreams of property owners with secure title insurance and partners with 450+ trusted independent title agents as a licensed underwriter in 24 states and the District of Columbia, with annual revenues exceeding $120 million. Visit alliantnational.com/newsroom for additional information.

Alliant National and Cloudstar Announce Strategic Partnership

Partnership provides Alliant National independent title agents access to advanced, efficient cybersecurity technology solutions

LONGMONT, Colo. – Alliant National Title Insurance Company (Alliant National) and Cloudstar recently announced a strategic partnership that allows Alliant National’s independent title agents access to Cloudstar’s cybersecurity advanced technology platform. This platform also includes project management tools designed to increase productivity.

Cloudstar is a multi-national technology platform that provides secure infrastructure, cloud hosting, data center colocation, email encryption and managed information technology services and support to regulated industries in the United States, Canada and South America.

“In a cloud-first world, title agents need easier ways to work while still utilizing their existing settlement services software,” said Gregory McDonald, CEO of Cloudstar. “Cloudstar makes it easy to run existing software in the cloud while accessing it from anywhere. Together, the Alliant National and Cloudstar partnership will provide Alliant National’s independent agents with both the tools they need to be more productive and the cybersecurity products they need to increase security and help prevent wire fraud.”

“We are all very excited about this new partnership and we’re glad to provide this opportunity for our independent agents to work with Cloudstar,” said Mike Rubin, Alliant National’s vice president of business development. “Alliant National Title Insurance Company agents will benefit from this partnership by enjoying a dedicated Cloudstar account manager, access to new products and services before they are released to the public, as well as special offers and pricing incentives.”

Visit alliantnational.com/newsroom for additional information.

###

MEDIA INQUIRIES

Cathie Beck
Capital City Public Relations
e : cathie@capitalcitypr.com
p : 303-241-0805

About Alliant National Title Insurance Company

The Independent Underwriter for The Independent Agent®, Alliant National believes in putting other people first. The company protects the dreams of property owners with secure title insurance and partners with 400+ trusted independent title agents as a licensed underwriter in 22 states, with annual revenues exceeding $110 million. Visit joinalliantnational.com for additional information.

About Cloudstar

Cloudstar is a multi-national provider of virtual desktop hosting, hosted software and applications, custom tailored IT infrastructure design, email encryption, managed services, IT security, and consulting to regulated industries across the United States, Canada, and South America.

Cloudstar started in 2009 as Cloudstar Consulting Corporation and was created to meet the unique needs of the land title industry. As the company grew from a consulting and IT infrastructure design firm, Cloudstar Consulting Corporation re-branded as simply “Cloudstar”, a DBA of the newly formed holdings company, Keystone Management Group, LLC. In 2014, Cloudstar purchased a 50% interest in U.S. Telecommunications firm, Teletonix Communications in addition to adding Diologix, an electronic medical records encryption company and Notary Transfer to its portfolio of brands. As of 2017, Cloudstar has expanded to provide services to the entirety of the United States, Canada and Mexico with offices in three states and privately held infrastructure co-located at five U.S data centers.

Today, Cloudstar services the needs of tens of thousands of end users from small firms to publicly traded companies. For more information, please visit MyCloudstar.com.

Time Saving Tips and Tricks

Running out of time to manage social media? By now, you know the value of social media to your business development. It’s a vital avenue to reach new business, strengthen existing relationships and maintain positive connections with current and future employees. It’s a way for you to share your business culture, events and news in your communities.

But finding the time to create all those posts and review your post performances is the challenge. So, how can you do that when your time is spent out networking and conducting your daily business operations?

Here are time saving tools that allow you to share valuable content with your audiences. Social media scheduling tools allow you to manage multiple profiles and networks from one location. So, you can schedule your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other posts for the week (or the month or longer) via one tool, saving you valuable time. You can also review reports (or customize reports) to view your post performances. For instance, you can track how many people you reached, how many people liked, shared, commented on, etc. each post.

Since there are numerous social media scheduling programs available, each with their own set of advantages, drawbacks and prices (some programs are offered at no charge), be sure to do your research prior to choosing a social media scheduling program for your business. Here are a few of the more popular social media scheduling programs:

Hootsuite.

This program optimizes your time by allowing users to manage all social profiles from a single dashboard. Users customize their dashboard in the way they want to see their data. The program comes with a default reporting system for social media analytics and you can also customize the reports to meet your particular needs. Hootsuite is a popular and widely-used program for businesses of all sizes.

MavSocial.

MavSocial is a platform that allows users to schedule and track social media posts and their performance. Another MavSocial time saver is its large stock image gallery for ease of finding images for your posts.

Sprout Social.

Built to scale, Sprout Social saves time for teams of varying sizes. This social media management platform provides engagement, publishing, analytics and collaboration tools. Sprout Social includes a robust selection of reporting tools to analyze your social media performance. Sprout Social is a popular program for advertising and PR agencies that manage multiple client social media accounts.

As a title agent, are you obligated to ensure your service providers are in compliance? And if so, how?

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), enacted in 1999 (codified as amended at 15 U.S.C Chapter 94: Privacy), establishes basic privacy standards for “financial institutions,” which includes not only lenders, but also title insurers, title agents and settlement/escrow agents.

The CFPB expects lenders to oversee their service providers to make sure that they are in compliance with the law to protect consumer interests; this was expressed in CFPB Bulletin 2012-03, published April 13, 2012. This duty extends to title agents and settlement service providers.

While title agents and settlement service providers are third-party vendors to lenders, those who provide services to title agents and settlement service providers are fourth-party vendors to lenders. The requirement to evaluate, review, and monitor qualifications and performance extends as far down the service chain as necessary to make sure that everyone is in compliance with the rules protecting customers.

So what can you do as a title agent to make sure that your vendors are in compliance?

• You can make sure that your vendors are contractually aware of their responsibilities. There are some great sample provisions regarding “rights and responsibilities” and “confidentiality and security,” in the FDIC’s Financial Institution Letters, Guidance for Managing Third-Party Risk, which you may choose to include in your vendor contracts.
• You can establish good vendor selection and management practices:
• Designate someone within your company to provide oversight as the “vendor manager.”
• Perform background and reference checks.
• Provide due diligence questionnaires and checklists.
• Implement non-disclosure agreements.
• Train vendors on their consumer protection obligations.
• Monitor and score performance, and provide feedback; sight visits can be particularly useful.
• Provide a communication matrix or plan, and include provisions for reporting in the event of a perceived security threat or security breach.

This information is not legal, business or financial advice. It is intended only to be helpful to you and to increase awareness. There may be many ways to approach this issue, and it is always best to consult with legal counsel and subject matter experts to develop a plan that is right for you.

Here’s How to Increase Audience Engagement Via Social Media

Social media is everywhere. And it seems like every day another social media network pops up. How do you make the best use of your time, while also keeping up with new networks, new ideas and all that posting work?

Start by understanding which networks are available, and of those networks:

• Who is their target audience?
• What is their primary purpose?

Then, match that data to your target audience to determine which networks you should engage with to get maximize your audience engagement. Alliant National’s marketing team can help you make that determination. The most popular social networks for Alliant National’s independent agents are LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Once you know which networks to join, create a strategy that includes: topics you’ll post about, as well as the frequency of your posts (2-3 times per week, consistently, is great). Here are a few tips to get the most audience engagement out of your social media activities:

Include graphics in your posts. Everyone loves graphics in social media posts. They are easy to spot when scrolling though our feeds and the more eye-catching, the better. Make sure you use clear, politically-correct and appropriately sized graphics for your post. Do a quick google search to determine size requirements. Also, be sure to give appropriate credit to each image.

#UseHashtags. Hashtags help keywords stand out in the post, and they’re also handy for tracking discussion around a specific topic and connecting with people who are searching for that particular hashtag.

Create interesting posts. Posts should be insightful, informative, fun and thought-provoking to audiences. People don’t want to be advertised to through your social media channels. Share industry-related articles, fun holidays, pictures and stories of your business supporting local charities, events happening in your community, etc. Invite your audience to share their stories and pictures and to comment on your posts.

Join the social media party. Don’t just post. Read and respond to all comments you receive on your social media networks. Comment on social media posts from business contacts. Think of it as a networking event. You have to get out there and be social in order for it to be a valuable experience.