News Archives - Settlor

What the spiritual gurus teach about the interconnected nature of life has come into focus more sharply in the past two decades for the broad swath of service providers we call the real estate industry.

Real estate agents, stagers, home inspectors, mold remediators, pest inspectors, surveyors, appraisers, county recorders, attorneys, notaries, lenders, title agents, escrow officers, homeowners associations, homeowners and home warranty agents are all connected and passing information through an interconnected web of portals fueled by a technological matrix.

A title agency is less a brick-and-mortar business on a street corner, and more of an intricate web of connections to data, service providers, applications, customers, financial institutions, cloud repositories, and governmental record holders.

What you need in your tech providers is not someone who wants to sell you a new gadget, but a partner who understands the intricacies of your entire process and can collaborate with you to improve and perfect your system for greater operational excellence. Someone who facilitates an interoperable network of resources, tools and people positioned for optimal results.

While agency owners rely heavily on their IT professionals to assess the technological efficacy of a new innovation, it is the owners who should be looking at the long game, and that is the relationship between the tech provider and their IT department over the life of the technology, as it moves through its integration, iterations, updates and improvements.

Vetting a tech provider’s commitment to partnership

Assessing the character and integrity of the provider as an ongoing partner is a little challenging, since every company claims to have superior customer support.

Here are a few areas to explore to elicit a deeper understanding of the tech providers’ commitment to supporting your agency and your staff with the new solution or platform.

Service level agreement (SLA)

As a baseline, thoroughly evaluate the SLA and ask questions if you need greater clarity. One question to be sure to ask (and you may find it in the MSA): “What happens to my data should I ever need to change my tech provider?”

References

Request contact information for current users that you can interview for purposes of evaluating the relationship between the user and the tech provider, rather than to explore the functional aspects of the technology itself. Specifically, you are looking for a contact at the user’s location who most often interacts with the tech provider. If possible, visit the operations of a customer using the tech or software. Do not buy based solely on what the provider claims it “can” do. Instead, do what you can to evaluate what’s in the market right now and being used every day in the real world.

Customer service

Talk to the customer service team to understand the extent to which they offer support, the speed with which they can respond, and their realistic availability, i.e., Monday through Friday vs. 24/7. Be certain the support entity includes tenured and experienced resources that truly understand the job and the title industry. Additionally, look for red flags that might suggest the support group is a revolving door of 3rd party providers.

Innovation

In the tech world, innovation is where the rubber meets the road. Your tech provider should have a plan on paper outlining where they are headed in terms of strategic vision, innovations and updates. If the tech provider is resting on its laurels, be extremely cautious about joining forces.

And finally, when you are talking to the tech provider’s representatives, pay close attention to what they are saying. Are they asking you questions about your needs and ambitions or are they hyper-focused on telling you how great their product and services are. A true tech partner will want to align their product and services to your needs, not just sell you on their attributes.

Settlor’s technology is built on more than 30 years of innovation and improvements based on thousands of transactions, user-centric input and industry professional feedback. Contact us to learn how we can help you build a cloud-based, streamlined platform to improve both operations and customer service to prepare your agency for future opportunities.

The reason you need title production software that enables effective data handling may feel like a no-brainer in the title insurance industry.

We are an industry constructed on the very foundation of land title information that came in bits and bytes of data written out by hand in dusty old volumes in the courthouse, evolved into paper-based title plants, moved to a semi-digital environment of scanned documents and has now landed in the true bits and bytes world of BIG data.

Of course, at the very core of a good, modern TPS is its ability to empower title professionals to handle and process data for closing and escrow accounting purposes, employing real-time data sharing with quick access to critical information. That includes seamless integrations to the technology solutions best suited to an individual title business’ needs, regardless of who develops those solutions.

But in the future world of commerce, we are just beginning to imagine, with AI tools coming online, your ability to access, interpret and make decisions based on your data will become increasingly vital to every aspect of your business. Here are some necessary steps to ensure your data is ready for the future.

Creating useful data

How do you “create” useful data? Isn’t data just…well…data? Yes and no. Data does not become useful until you enter, organize and present it in a way that becomes easily accessible.

The first point of order is to ensure the data is accurate and uniform. That begins with your data entry personnel who must be trained to enter information in a uniform style, i.e., normalizing how you enter a phone number – dots, dashes or parentheses – or how you enter company names, so they are uniformly searchable – Co. vs. Company, Corp. vs. Corporation. Anyone who has ever managed a database knows how quickly it can get messy if a multitude of employees are entering data in different ways.

Secondly, a good database manager is ensuring the data that is being gathered and entered is in direct correlation to what the company requires in creating its annual business plan or meeting specific goals and objectives throughout the year. This requires that the database manager have a seat at the table when the management team is creating its goals and objectives to make sure that as they proceed through the year, they will have the kind of information at hand they will require to track progress.

And finally, it has to be available in a format that can be easily accessed, presented and interpreted. Good software will have or make it easy to access reporting functions that you can access to build the kind of reports that will be most useful in your efforts to analyze and interpret what is happening in the moment.

It is vitally important that managers who have been tasked with meeting the goals and objectives of the company have access to this data and are trained on how to pull accurate and up-to-date reports so that as the management team is making decisions, they are doing so with accurate and “useful” data that is giving them the truest picture of the health of the company.

At Settlor, we offer the first and only cloud-based platform to simplify the user experience by combining modern technology with three decades of user input and refinement. Settlor is an all-in-one title, closing and escrow accounting application that offers users real-time data sharing, a secure customer and consumer-facing portal, quick access to critical information, in-app communication, enhanced security and ownership over company data.

Data reporting and analytics can be a tricky process to navigate if you don’t have a native talent and/or passion for such things, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build out a solid system within your agency by establishing a few consistent practices and priorities.

You can begin by exploring the difference between reporting and analytics with your management team and understanding the role and function of each process.

The second priority is to get your whole team rowing in the same direction by, together, building a solid foundation of usable data, regular reporting, and focused analytics.

Reporting vs. Analytics

Reporting is something most agencies do on a regular basis, and that is simply gathering and formatting data from your TPS into a usable form. This could be as easy as building a dashboard that automatically imports relevant data that the team desires to view on a regular basis or creating charts or data sheets for a presentation at meetings.

Analytics is the process of mining the data for a specific end, such as formulating a forecast, adjusting business plans based on what is emerging in the market or devising a new growth strategy centered on specific opportunities identified in the reports.

For example, as interest rates go down and you see more refi business flowing into your agency, the analytical process asks, how do we capitalize on this trend to grow our business in that market vertical?

Another case in point: the ability for a title business to compare or contrast client order volume with historical trends, helping to address potential churn.

Asking the right questions

Of course, if you really want your data to work for you most effectively, you can’t just be reactive to what is coming in. You have to formulate the right questions so that you have a clear idea of where you want to place your efforts to maximize your growth.

Back to the example of the expanding refi market, you can ask a question of your data such as, “Which marketing channel is most effective for us in reaching and building relationships with those clients most likely to refer refi business?” or, “What are the top 10 sources of refi business over the past five years?” or, “Who on staff has had the most success building a strong book of business in the refi end of the business.”

Getting the answers to these questions sets you on the path of building your marketing outreach in the most effective way, while focusing energy on your top-tier customers, with a team led by your most effective producer.

Bam! The team is off and running.

Analytics is all about connecting the dots between different data sets to come up with the most targeted strategy for a specific goal or objective. This is most effective when your business teams have useful and current data and the entire company has access to shared dashboards that include both department and company objectives.

When thinking about adding functionality to their production systems, title agents often approach the analysis of a new solution or software by asking what it can do, how much time it can save, or how it might improve customer service.

These are all good questions, and it’s important to assess what the return on your investment (ROI) is likely to be, else why consider the solution at all!

But we are at a peculiar juncture of technological innovation that is going to be increasingly driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Without getting too far into the weeds, AI is going to be dependent on data and feeding the hungry beast is going to require the larger capacity that only cloud-based computing can offer.

So, as you approach any improvements in your tech stack, it might be important to ask if the company’s product is cloud-based.

The advantages of cloud-based solutions

There are a lot of practical advantages to cloud-based solutions for an industry such as title insurance, which often manages multiple brick and mortar locations as well as business on the fly, where closings can be conducted from anywhere a notary can be paired up with a homebuyer.

These advantages include:

Accessibility to closing documents, transaction data, and solutions from anywhere on any device
Centralized data security and monitoring of remote locations seamlessly by one core team
Cost savings resulting from maintaining far fewer hardware components across the spectrum of the company’s offices
Reliable element of a business recovery plan in the face of a physical disaster at any company locations

There are also key technological advantages to working in the cloud, which, as we move into the future, are going to become increasingly critical to the work we do. These include:

Reduced cyber risks

One of greatest benefits of cloud-based TPS is reduced cyber risks. On-premise based, legacy platforms require the use of RDPs (Remote Desktop programs) and these RDPs can be easy pickings for sophisticated cyber criminals. Additionally, the RDPs provide a latent experience for users because they are not going directly to the cloud but bouncing to an on-premise server that then bounces them to the cloud if needed. The risks only increase while providing a slower, frustrating experience for users.

Deployment of APIs

While application programming interfaces (APIs) are used extensively “on the ground” within a company’s own systems, the burgeoning use of APIs is often found within the cloud framework, which promotes improved collaboration in the development process.

Scalability

There are few industries more concerned with scalability than the title insurance industry, which experiences a more dramatic ebb and flow than most. Working in the cloud allows a title company to adjust to those fluctuations far more economically with fewer resources tied up in computing storage systems on the ground.

AI and data processing

While we may not know the precise impact of artificial intelligence on the real estate industry of the future, what we do understand in the title insurance sector is our absolute dependence on accurate data and the ability to process that data at ever increasing speed and with far greater accuracy. Cloud-based technology, with its capacity to handle vast volumes of data, is going to be an absolute necessity as we learn to employ AI-solutions effectively in the coming decades.

At Settlor, we offer the first and only cloud-based platform that simplifies the user experience by combining modern technology with three decades of user input and refinement. Settlor is an all-in-one title, closing and escrow accounting application that offers users real-time data sharing, documents and workflows, quick access to critical information, in-app communication, enhanced security and ownership over personal data.

There’s a fascinating concept that’s been getting attention lately called “enshittification.” No, really, that’s what they’re calling it. The term describes how digital platforms often start out great, then gradually get worse as they prioritize profits over the people who actually use them.

Here’s how it typically unfolds. A platform launches with a fantastic user experience to build a loyal following. Once they’ve locked in enough users, they start catering more to other, outside interests at the expense of those original users. Finally, they squeeze both groups to maximize shareholder returns, leaving everyone with a product that’s considerably worse than what they signed up for.

Sound familiar? If you’ve ever wondered why your search results are now buried under ads, or why your social media feed feels more like a shopping channel, you’re seeing this pattern in action.

The title insurance industry isn’t immune to this dynamic. Long-established tech providers sometimes lean heavily on their tenure in the market as proof of their value. But longevity doesn’t always translate to better service or more responsive technology. Sometimes it means the opposite. A company that’s been around for decades might have grown comfortable. They might prioritize their existing infrastructure over innovation. They might be more focused on maintaining market position than listening to what title professionals actually need.

We’re not suggesting every established provider falls into this trap. Many don’t. But the pattern is worth recognizing when you’re evaluating your tech stack or considering a new solution.

Here’s what matters more than how long a company has been around: Do they actually listen to their customers? Are they building technology that adapts to your changing needs, or are they forcing you into processes designed for their convenience? When you ask for an integration with another tool you rely on, do they facilitate it or try to sell you their alternative?

At Settlor, we think about this a lot. Our team has been in the title industry for decades, but we’re a relatively new name. That combination gives us perspective without complacency. We built our platform on 30 years of user feedback, but we’re not beholden to outdated systems or legacy thinking.

More importantly, we believe in partnership. We’re not trying to own every piece of your tech stack. We know you have relationships with providers who serve you well, and we welcome those integrations. If anything, Settlor is more of an ecosystem or network for title and escrow businesses that only grows stronger and more valuable as we add customers, vendors and integrations. Our cloud-based platform is designed to work with almost any other technology you need because we understand that interoperability isn’t optional in this business. Your operation should flow, not fracture across disconnected systems.

That’s part of building a community of trust. It means being transparent about what we do well and where we fit in your world. It means responding when you tell us something needs to change. It means recognizing that customization isn’t a burden but an opportunity to serve you better.

Being established can be valuable. Experience counts for something. But what counts more is whether a company uses that experience to serve you better or to extract more value from you while delivering less. As you think about your technology partnerships, ask yourself which category your current providers fall into. And if the answer isn’t immediately clear, maybe it’s time to ask them some harder questions.

The core technology for a title company has always been its title production software (TPS), and as the real estate transaction has become more complex, title companies have looked to their TPS providers to streamline the production process by developing more features.

Let’s face it. Not all TPS are created the same. But what title and escrow firm owners need is: a unified, simplified experience for users. Their jobs are already stressful enough. Having multiple applications to manage, login into and understand, all while staying vigilant for cyber fraud, is hard enough. A TPS that unifies and simplifies the user experience WITHOUT limiting connections to other vendors is ideal.

But features alone do not solve the ultimate challenge of putting together a complicated title, escrow and closing package since there are many pieces in that package arriving into the system from a host of providers.

The better approach using today’s technological tools may be to become not the “gadget” platform but instead the “hub” platform.

What title agents want is a unified experience that funnels all of the bits and pieces to a core operating platform, which is less about adding features and more about connecting to critical providers in a way that eliminates switching from one program to another and in fact embeds other software directly into the process itself.

Embedded financial services

An example of this idea is embedded financial services, where you have a portal directly linked to the account within the TPS. This is already in play for companies who use another kind of TPS – a transaction processing system.

According to Edenred, a UK-based payment solutions company, “Embedded banking means integrating banking services — like payments, accounts, cards or lending — directly into a non-financial company’s digital product or platform. This goes beyond offering payments at checkout. It’s about embedding the full stack of banking functionality right where your users already are.”

This same concept can be applied to many of the applications title agents must use and connections they must make to manage the entire transaction process. But to get these functions embedded in the TPS does require rethinking the entire approach to title software.

APIs and cloud-based environments are the key

The advent of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) has been critical in developing these embedded systems. The API acts as an intermediary, allowing one piece of software to ask for information from another system without needing to understand or navigate the internal operations of the responding software.

Cloud based systems open the door to these connections as well by offering the heightened power of cloud computing for data storage, analytics and remote management.

Together, these new tools combined with artificial intelligence are creating the potential for a more open, immediate and intelligent ecosystem that is quite different from the isolated legacy systems we currently rely upon to manage the complex real estate transaction in our title offices.

At Settlor, we pride ourselves on providing a provider-agnostic solution, allowing title firms to choose the tech stack pieces that meet their unique needs. We offer the first and only cloud-based platform that simplifies the user experience by combining modern technology with three decades of user input and refinement. Settlor offers users real-time data sharing, documents, quick access to critical information, in-app communication, enhanced security and ownership over personal data. Best of all, we’re from the title industry, and we’re here for the long haul! Contact us today to learn more.