Industry News

The National Notary Association created the first nationwide, easy-to-search database of laws that affect notaries public. The database was created to address changing state laws as well as new regulations set by government agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This free tool will help notaries and companies that employ Notaries find the laws they need to be aware of and comply with.

Todd Bjorklund, a leader in the real estate and mortgage industries, passed away on July 19 at the age of 56. Bjorklund was an entrepreneur, having started his first business when he was only 18 years old.

Black Knight Financial Services announced the development of Closing Insight, a set of web-based solutions designed to help lenders address the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Integrated Mortgage Disclosures rule and to automate the numerous multi-party processes required to close a loan. Closing Insight will be delivered by RealEC Technologies, a division of Black Knight Financial Services, through the RealEC Loan Quality Gateway. The RealEC Loan Quality Gateway is an open technology platform that provides integration, data management, decisioning support and workflow management through a 24/7 data exchange that connects more than 15,000 of the mortgage industry’s service and solution providers.

NextDeal (formerly Digital Docs.net) a developer of Software as a Service solutions designed to assist settlement agents to grow their revenue, is making its encryption software, SafeSend, available to the settlement services industry at no cost. Read on for more details.

There are many reasons you should keep aware of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its actions. One particular reason is because the bureau is concerned about you — or at least your interactions with consumers. If what you are doing is violating a federal consumer financial law, the CFPB is going to take interest and likely take action. With the amount of power this agency has, that should concern anyone who is working under the CFPB’s purview. Even if you think the bureau can’t touch you, there’s a chance it can. When the bureau opened its doors in July 2011, it took over the regulatory authority for consumer financial laws. You may be wondering why you or your company would be subject to CFPB enforcement if you see yourself as falling into one of the agency’s covered persons categories. The issue is, however, that if anything you do falls within the purview of one or more of those 19 laws, then the bureau’s authority can reach you.

On June 20, the Shawnee, Kansas Municipal Court went live with a new case management system that increases the quality of service to the public, streamlines court processes, and will deliver a substantial long term return on investment for the court and the city. “The city’s partnership with Pioneer Technology Group (PTG) has been very positive, and the Benchmark system has greatly streamlined our workflow,” said Stephen Powell, city clerk in Shawnee. “Benchmark allowed us to become one of the first municipal courts in the state to go paperless, has saved a considerable amount of staff time, and allowed the court to provide better, more reliable, customer service.”

To improve employee knowledge on protecting client information, Alliant National Title Insurance Co. has engaged Real Estate Data Shield to provide training sessions on data privacy and security across its 10-state operating area. The required training arms employees with a keen awareness of the laws, regulations, and regulator expectations relating to safeguarding non-public personal information. “Everyone at Alliant National is being trained in data security, privacy and best practices,” said Chief Information Officer David Sinclair. “We are taking these steps to ensure clients’ non-public personal information is properly protected in our offices and networks.”

Founded 50 years ago by a small group of downstate Illinois lawyers, Attorneys’ Title Guaranty Fund Inc. (ATG) has evolved into a family of companies offering a broad spectrum of services to more than 4,000 lawyers in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan. The company now garners revenue in excess of 100 million annually and will issue its three millionth title insurance policy this year. “Our 50th anniversary is a celebration of our founding members and the thousands of law firms and agents who have together built the company into the success it is today,” said Peter Birnbaum, ATG president and chief executive officer. “It’s also a celebration of our staff — loyal stewards of the company who believe in our mission to be the premier lawyer service organization for the benefit of the public.”

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) launched a Web page on cybersecurity (www.ffiec.gov/cybersecurity.htm).The Web page is a central repository for current and future FFIEC-related materials on cybersecurity. While information security has been a core focus of supervision for decades, the FFIEC members are taking a number of steps to raise awareness of cybersecurity risks at financial institutions and the need to identify, assess and mitigate these risks in light of the increasing volume and sophistication of cyber threats that pose risks to all industries. The FFIEC Web page provides links to joint statements, webinars and other information that may help financial institutions when thinking about the issue of cybersecurity.

Interthinx, a subsidiary of First American Financial Corp. and a provider of comprehensive risk mitigation solutions for the financial services industry, has released its quarterly interactive Mortgage Fraud Risk Report covering data collected in the first quarter of 2014. In the first quarter of 2014, the national Mortgage Fraud Risk Index value was 100, the same value as it was a year ago and down 1 percent from Q4 2013. The national Property Valuation Fraud Risk Index is 128, up 27 percent from last quarter and 17 percent from a year ago. Indicators suggest this increase is driven by persons in certain areas purchasing and listing multiple properties in the same neighborhood. By controlling those markets, these persons have the ability to artificially control the price of a property to their advantage. Another contributing factor observed is the rise of properties being appraised well above traditional valuation thresholds.