Starting with the cloud: A vision for the future of title technology

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.