Industry News

During the National Settlement Services Summit in Cleveland, Phil Schulman, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of K&L Gates, informed attendees about the current regulatory landscape and explained how the new regulatory reforms, like the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage (QM) rules, affect every real estate settlement service provider.

ServiceLink, an end-to-end origination, servicing and default solutions provider for the top mortgage lenders and servicers, announced from the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) 2013 User Conference the availability of its MERS Reconciliation and Resolution program.

Deedback Solutions, a division of Reservation Services International (RSI), has confirmed a strategic partnership with Stewart Title Co. to provide a professional and seamless service that sees the return of recovered timeshare inventory to a resort or its designee.

Entitle Direct, the title industry’s only direct-to-consumer title insurance underwriter, released a new guide to help consumers understand the title process and services, called the Smart Consumer’s Guide to Reducing Closing Costs . Read on for the details, and what the tips the guide provides to encourage consumer comparison shopping.

Williston Financial Group, the parent company of WFG National Title Insurance Co., has acquired Community Title Services of Nevada. Based in Las Vegas, Community Title Services of Nevada will now operate as WFG National Title Co. of Nevada.

A regional underwriter in 2013 isn’t so much defined by geography as it is by capital surplus. That surplus increases the focus on claims response and mitigation, on applications and audits , and it can limit the availability of certain larger real estate deals. But that size is also used to an underwriter’s advantage. The core business of the title underwriter is claims. All decision-making, in one way or another, comes from how this will affect or is affected by the claims experience. “Claims is the mo...

A research analyst at Stephens Inc. recently was quoted on The Wall Street Transcript discussing how Stewart Information Services Corp. is positioned well in the market for when the decrease in refinance activity hits its full swing. Read on for his reasoning.

Throughout the National Settlement Services Summit, the buzzword was compliance. That word permeated through several regulatory-focused sessions, but also made its way into business development sessions. In one such session, speakers described ways to communicate value to customers in this new era of compliance. Read on to find out more.

The application process and ongoing audits and reviews are key pieces of building a quality title agent network for any underwriter, but the attention paid to these processes has increased. A panel of top executives at three regional underwriters took the stage at the National Settlement Services Summit to discuss these processes and how they contribute to their business models, and how they hopefully will help build a bridge to the lending and regulatory community. Local knowledge key in application On...

Work together and speak up about concerns you may have about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will enforce its requirement that lenders oversee all of their vendors. These were two of the main takeaways from a session on lender liability at the National Settlement Services Summit on June 11. The group also discussed how agents could start working with lenders now, despite the lack of clarity from the CFPB at this point. “I think the stage is set, it’s time to take action even though the speci...