After years of incrementally slow progress on the e-mortgage front, the pandemic succeeded in catapulting the mortgage and settlement services industry into the digital mortgage and closing age in short order. As state legislatures quickly rushed through a variety of pending remote online notarization (RON) laws, more agents jumped at the chance to add this capability to their tool belt.
In an April 12 release, ALTA reported that the number of title professionals offering digital closings more than tripled over the past two years, from 14% participation prior to 2019, to more than 46% in its most recent survey.
The question for agents is, do your partners and potential customers know about your new digital closing capability? And how can you get the word out?
MISMO has provided a national solution that you can capitalize on immediately to ensure potential customers who are looking for a service provider with RON capability can check on your status.
The MISMO e-Eligibility Exchange was created to accelerate industry-wide adoption of digital closings. According to a recent release from MISMO, the e-Eligibility Exchange provides centralized access to acceptance criteria that enables lenders and other industry participants to easily determine the right type of digital mortgage closing for each loan, including the use of electronic promissory notes (eNotes) or RON.
How Can Agents Get Into the e-Eligibility Exchange?
The only way to get into the exchange is by first getting registered in the ALTA Title and Settlement Agency Registry. ALTA announced that it will be the sole provider of title and settlement data to MISMO through the registry, which currently includes more than 9,000 locations, with more than 2,000 of them indicating they have RON capability.
The registry is free and ALTA membership is not required. After you register, your underwriter will confirm your information. According to MISMO, this verification, along with the uniqueness of the ALTA ID, ensures the accuracy of the data in the e-Eligibility Exchange for users.
If you are not yet signed up with the ALTA registry, here’s what you need to know:
Visit alta.org/registry to learn more about the ALTA Title & Settlement Agency Registry.
Download materials to register on the ALTA resources site to begin the registration process.
ALTA will provide you with a unique 7-digit identifier, called the ALTA ID, which is automatically assigned to each new database record as a permanent ID number.
ALTA ID numbers are available for free to title agents and to real estate attorneys.
Once you are registered, your underwriters will be contacted to confirm your status.
Recent legislation has helped grow adoption of e-recording and e-notarization, but the lack of uniformity still makes it difficult for lenders to universally adopt electronic practices, forcing lenders to make a loan-by-loan decision about what documents can be electronically signed.
MISMO’s e-Eligibility Exchange helps address this challenge by allowing lenders to quickly assess requirements for individual loans.
More importantly for you, it allows lenders to identify the availability of title and settlement agents with electronic capabilities. Hop on the digital train in 2022. With the advent of the e-Eligibility Exchange, you now have the perfect opportunity to put yourself front and center for digital closing opportunities in the coming years.
Wow! It has been an overwhelming past year-and-a-half, particularly with the pandemic and everything that came with it. I’m thankful to work in an essential business area – namely, the real estate field.
Prior to joining Alliant National, I worked at eRecording Partners Network (ePN) for eight years. They’re one of the main electronic document recording service providers. The other main vendors are CSC, Indecomm and Simplifile.
Document recording is one of the final steps in the real estate transaction process. Getting real estate documents officially on record with counties is essential to the successful completion of a transaction. This process includes traditional recording of paper documents, as well as electronic document recording (eRecording for short).
eRecording started back in 1999 and it uses technology that’s now over 20 years old; some people are surprised by this. The eRecording process offers numerous benefits for title agents, other business submitters and counties. Turnaround times are reduced. Final policies are issued more quickly and the gap time is lessened. Some other benefits include: faster rejection resolution; streamlined electronic payments; the elimination of rejections for incorrect recording fee payments; compliance with industry best practices; and lender requirements and eco-friendliness. Plus, eRecording is more streamlined, secure, and cost-effective. As one title agent said to me a couple years ago, “It’s like going from the Flintstones to the Jetsons!”
But how does the process work exactly? Well, first it’s important to understand that eRecording is an “e-delivery” business service option for title companies, law firms, banks and other businesses that record land record documents frequently. It is not a service for one-time document recording. Once you have your documents executed and ready to record, eRecording is another option for document delivery, recording and return. County business customers can choose to pay postage, UPS, FedEx, a courier or an employee to deliver and return their paper documents. Or they can pay to eRecord them. Most eRecording vendors charge a few dollars per document. Some have other fees as well. Explore your options to ensure you are selecting an eRecording provider that best fits your unique business needs.
Getting started with eRecording is easy. Requirements are basic. You need a computer, a scanner, internet access and a web browser. You’ll also need to choose and sign up for a service with an eRecording vendor approved by counties where you record documents. Once your eRecording vendor sets up your login and account, you should be able to start eRecording immediately. Most counties typically have multiple approved eRecording vendor options. Most have approved ePN, CSC and Simplifile as eRecording vendor options. Sometimes Indecomm is included as well.
When you eRecord, the fees remain the same. eRecording vendors typically charge a fee per document; usually, this amounts to a few dollars. Some have adopted a “variable rate” approach based on volume and other factors. Some also charge additional sign-up, monthly or annual fees. Ask each vendor for their pricing options to gain a clear picture.
Today, eRecording is legal and available in 49 states, plus Washington, D.C. Vermont is the only state where eRecording isn’t yet legal. As of August 2021, almost 2,300 jurisdictions are eRecording nationwide. That’s about 88 percent by population. In about 15 states, 100 percent of the counties allow eRecording. Alliant National’s home state of Colorado is one of the states with eRecording available in 100 percent of its counties. The Property Records Industry Association (PRIA) is a great resource for state and county status for eRecording. Many state and/or county recording associations also provide information on eRecording availability, as well as contact info for each county recording office.
Due in big part to the COVID-19 pandemic, use of eRecording sky-rocketed in 2020. Shortly after the pandemic hit in March of 2020, things changed for everyone. At the county level, offices closed or had limited access. Some Recorder offices closed completely for a time or tried to continue operations by working remotely. It was a challenging period, and for a time, there seemed to be a lull in eRecording activity in county offices. In some cases, operations still aren’t back to where they were pre-pandemic. But thankfully, as we got toward the latter part of last year, we started to see a rise in county adoption of eRecording once again.
Now you may be asking, what about recording turnaround times? Pre-pandemic, it was pretty safe to estimate same day or next day eRecording by counties. And in many cases, it wasn’t uncommon for counties to turn documents around within a couple hours or less. However, during the pandemic, turnaround times increased in many counties, and at times dramatically. Situations, of course, varied. Sometimes, both traditional recording and eRecording were affected. In others, traditional recording was affected, but eRecording wasn’t affected as much. Over the course of the past year-and-a-half, we’ve seen improvements. I’m sure that those of you “in the trenches” and involved with getting documents recorded have seen and experienced fluctuations and changes in recording turnaround times. But I can say with confidence that eRecording certainly helps with recording turnaround overall.
Over the past decade, eRecording has received more attention due to regulatory changes (CFPB and TRID), more stringent requirements on lenders and, in turn, on their service providers – including those that record documents with counties. ALTA released its best practices in early 2013, which included a call for faster delivery, tracking and timely response to rejections. PRIA also released their TRID Informational Paper and their eRecording Best Practices for Recorders in 2015. These documents cover items like accepting all document types, allowing multiple eRecording vendors, imaging and making eRecording easy for their business customers, among others.
While there are now almost 15 states with 100 percent eRecording, there are others that are close to the 100 percent mark. To gain a complete picture of each state’s status, PRIA put together a helpful map. Some states are working on legislation that would mandate that all counties make eRecording available by a certain date. My home state of Ohio is one of them. I know that Indiana, Kentucky and others are working on legislation as well.
As of July 2021, about 88 percent of the U.S. population lives in eRecording jurisdictions. Counties continue to come online with eRecording or expand their services by adding more eRecording document types. Counties, eRecording submitter vendors, underwriters, and industry associations like ALTA, PRIA and state associations, continue to raise awareness and promote eRecording. If eRecording is not yet available in counties where you conduct business, please ask your county recording office how soon they will offer eRecording or when they’ll start eRecording deeds and let them know that you are interested to explore the benefits of this technology.
For more information on eRecording, here are the websites for eRecording vendors that service counties across the U.S.:
The adoption and implementation of remote online notarization (RON) received a tremendous boost during the COVID-19 pandemic. Buyers, sellers and title agents are looking to close transactions in the safest way possible. According to the American Land Title Association (ALTA), “Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia have either passed a RON law or issued an executive order pertaining to remotely notarizing documents. Some have done both.”
In December of 2020, ALTA reported that RON use had increased 547 percent during the year compared to 2019. If you are a “Star Trek” fan, the lightning-fast adoption of RON – as well as alternative remote closing methods such as Remote Ink-Signed Notarization (RIN) – has felt like the title industry has gone from cruising to warp speed in a nanosecond. It can even feel tempting to utter one of the show’s classic lines like “Beam me up, Scotty!” when thinking about such transformative change.
But let us back up a bit. As the automobile was invented and became a commonplace form of transportation, society built an accompanying infrastructure – including roads, highways, bridges and tunnels. The same is needed for RON. However, it takes time to develop secure and accessible technology that everyone can use. It requires effort to garner the acceptance of the county recorders who must be ready, willing and able to record native electronic instruments. Creating uniform laws to ensure interstate legal recognition and consumer confidence is also no easy matter.
Properly building out RON infrastructure necessitates the continuous collaboration of numerous parties, including individuals, industries and organizations. For example, MISMO, the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization, has been working on standards concerning credential analysis, borrower identification, audio-visual requirements (including the recording of the electronic notarization process) and audit trails. PRIA, the Property Record Industry Association, has been developing national standards and best practices for the land records industry. ALTA and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) have also joined forces to establish model RON legislation. Finally, there are numerous other stakeholders not identified here who have, and are, tirelessly working to enable the requisite RON infrastructure.
Currently, the federal Senate bill (SB) 3533, the Securing and Enabling Commerce Using Remote and Electronic Notarization Act of 2020 (otherwise known as the SECURE Notarization Act), is pending. If passed in 2021, the SECURE Notarization Act will permit RON across the nation and provide for minimum standards and interstate recognition. To track the progress of the SECURE Notarization Act, click on the link provided for SB 3533.
During this time of rapid transition, it is important to keep abreast of the latest RON developments, to “boldly go” forth and not end up like another classic science fiction show: “Lost in Space.”
Integration streamlines the digital closing process, saving agents time and effort
Longmont, Colo. – (January 21, 2021) – Alliant National Title Insurance Company, a unique title insurance underwriter that partners with independent agents to improve their competitive position, announces the launch of a new policy jacket integration with software partner E-Closing.
The new integration is now live within the E-Closing title production system and available for agent use. Agents who write for Alliant National will be able to pull Alliant National policy jackets directly through the software platform.
Agents can already generate closing protection letters (CPLs) through E-Closing’s software . They will no longer need to navigate to the Alliant National website to generate either of these documents, providing a more convenient and time-efficient experience overall.
“This integration is a helpful tool that will streamline the work of the agents we partner with, improving their ability to quickly obtain the documents they need,” said Bryan Johnson, Director of Information Technology for Alliant National. “It represents another effort on the part of Alliant National to put supporting the independent agent at the heart of everything we do.”
Alliant National distinguishes itself from competitors by combining strong underwriting capability with independent agents’ in-depth knowledge of local markets. The result is a nationwide network with deep roots in local communities, and a wealth of expertise that is flexible, nuanced, and continuously growing.
Cathie Beck Capital City Public Relation e : cathie@capitalcitypr.com p : 303-241-0805
ABOUT ALLIANT NATIONAL TITLE INSURANCE COMPANY
The Independent Underwriter for The Independent AgentSM – Alliant National believes in empowering people to thrive. The company protects the dreams of property owners with secure title insurance and partners with 500+ trusted independent title agents as a licensed underwriter in 27 states and the District of Columbia, with annual revenues exceeding $126 million.
About E-Closing
E-Closing is the title industry’s premier cloud-based title production system. E-Closing is trusted by thousands of title professionals across the country. E-Closing is a powerful tool that can help modernize and streamline any title operation. Whether providing better customer service, tracking business relationships, adopting a paperless environment or managing multiple offices, E-Closing equips title agents with the tools necessary to take their business to the next level.
Is your agency set up to close transactions using remote online notarization (RON)? If so, the American Land Title Association (ALTA) is encouraging you to let lenders know by updating your ALTA Registry listing.
“RON is in high demand and lenders are actively looking for title and settlement companies that can close their loans using this technology,” the association said in a recent post. “Being RON Ready could lead to new revenue during these difficult times.”
There is no cost to be included on the ALTA Registry.
