Written by: Ericka Larson- Data Trace Client Services

The evolution of title searching has changed dramatically since I entered the industry 18 years ago.  If you have a background in Title Searching and/or Examining you understand what I’m saying.

Old School

Two words I use often when I’m on a customer call providing a demonstration of our latest and greatest automated product, Title IQ.  The process of the Title Preliminary, Policy, or Commitment has really streamlined the last decade.

We used to have channels that we had to go through to complete a preliminary or policy.

I may be aging myself here but as actress, Joan Collins said, “Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine.”

If you’re a newbie…grab a seat, relax, and read. Gone are the days of manual steps…it started like this:

• Screener:  runs the property in the Data Trace application, pulls the data of the property, circles the documents off the title chain, and pulls the taxes and map.  Gasp…yes we actually printed everything before we went paperless.
• Searcher:  double-checks the screener’s work and places the vital documents in order in a file. Once all the needed documents are clipped inside the file, the searcher would then code all the documents, and handwrite the preliminary or policy on a cheat-sheet form that was stapled to the right of the file.
• Examiner:  examines the searcher’s work and write-up and sends it off to the word-processing group.
• Word-processing:  manually types up the preliminary or policy.
• Proofing:  reviews the typed up preliminary or policy for any errors.
• Title Unit:  Title officer or Title Assistant reviews before mailing out to the customer.

Phew…that was exhausting! Imagine how the customer felt after waiting 3-5 days sometimes up to 1-2 weeks to receive their package.

Why Automation?

We live in a world where technology changes every day.  We have an urgency to deliver the best quality product and services available to stay competitive. We should meet the needs of our customers, through a high level of productivity that is only obtainable through automation.

What is Title IQ?

Today, by leaning on Generation X’s and Y’s, Data Trace has evolved to develop automation for the Mortgage and Title Industry. Now, with the presence of Title IQ (TIQ), we have taken all the manual work and we’ve been able to shave down the turn-around-times (TATs) from days to minutes.

TIQ delivers the search package to the customer within 15-45 minutes. TIQ is one bundled package of the property and owner’s data, taxes, images, maps, xml of data and the customer’s own template of their preliminary or commitment.

Why does on-boarding take longer for TIQ?

I get asked all the time, why does it take awhile to on-board a customer for Title IQ? The simple answer is this:

The product team is delivering a fully automated product via an xml either through integration with a third party platform (ResWare) or FTP.  Title IQ is in the business of doing things right.

In order to deliver the customer’s product based on their specifications, we take their underwriting guidelines and their code-book, and create custom rules based on their needs.

Once we do this, we’ll hand it off to our team of developers to create the logic.  With this in place, we’re able to tag the owner’s documents from the property index (PI or title chain), return the images, tag open liens along with its references prior to the owner taking title and return the images where available.

In this case, the sky is not the limit. We are able to monitor the customer’s orders through our user interface and with a mouse-click, re-submit the Order if it fails due to an invalid address or incorrect county or state.

Our future is technology and automation.

By providing Title IQ to our customers, we give them the opportunity to remain competitive and successful. Automation keeps success within their grasp while it leaves their competitors stuck in the past.

Move to the future with Data Trace!