– Cotton recognized for her 30+ year career as an innovator in real estate data & analytics technology and contributions to building market-leading suites of essential data assets –

DataTrace announced today that Annette Cotton, vice president of data and client solutions, was selected as the recipient of the 2022 October Research Innovation award. 

The October Research Awards, which were presented at the National Settlement Services Summit on June 2, honor professionals in the title, underwriting, lending and settlement services industries for exemplary accomplishment in the areas of leadership, innovation and philanthropy. Cotton was recognized for her more than 30-year career as an innovator in real estate data and analytics technology and her contribution to building market-leading suites of essential data assets.

“Annette has been a true innovator her entire career, highlighted by the critical role she played in our recent title plant expansion, which nearly tripled the geographic footprint of our title plant data,” said Robert Karraa, president of DataTrace. “She has played a key role in developing technology-focused solutions that increase efficiency and automation, helping advance the title and settlement services industry’s digital transformation.”

Most recently, Cotton helped develop the artificial intelligence and automation technology that enabled DataTrace to add more than 1,000 new title plants, expanding the company’s title plant network to more than 1,600 plants, covering 80% of the U.S. population. As title companies more widely automate title production, the demand for state-of-the-art title plants across the country is expected to increase.

Cotton and her team of over 150 data experts have received or submitted applications for more than 20 patents for optical character recognition and data collection technologies. She also invented DataTrace’s proprietary verified record technology included within the company’s TitleFlex platform. Verified record technology increases information accuracy by digitally matching data among multiple, independent sources.

View the full press release: www.datatracetitle.com/press-releases.