Digging for data

Title insurers are the archeologists of the insurance world. They must dig deep into the past and systematically sift through mounds of public records on various real estate properties--just to be able to make an accurate underwriting decision. This is some of the most labor-intensive work in the property/casualty industry.

But, unlike workers who toil in the field of archeology, title researchers also must do their digging quickly and just as quickly send a report based on a title search to their customers--realtors, lenders, mortgage brokers, and escrow experts, among others. And although title specialists grapple with issues as complex as fraud, in the form of title forgeries, it's their approach to general business operations--research, data exchange, policy generation--that determines what kind of service they'll deliver to their customers. Increasingly, they are faced with deciding which technologies will be most effective in improving operations--and service.

In terms of technology there are a lot of opportunities for title insurers, since automation has not ranked high on their agenda. Paul Sakrekoff, systems committee chairman for American Land Title Association (Washington, DC) and MIS director at World Title Company, based in Burbank, CA, says, "Around 1990, I noticed that this industry was about 20 years behind everyone else in its technology utilization, When you look at what a company like USAA is doing in imaging and work-flow, and compare that with the title area, it's almost opposite ends of the spectrum," he says. But that state of affairs is changing and this will have a positive effect on the business, he says.

Meanwhile, title insurers continue to do what they've always done--unearth pertinent property facts. In many cases, the site at which they do their digging is the title plant, a hub that serves a particular county or region. This is the company's research center, where employees may access a database index to a microfilm library comprised of thousands of rolls of documents filmed from county recorders' records. It can be slow going for those who pull documents from microfilm to examine a chain of title.

Though most title insurers do heavy research work, there are differences among them. In fact, availability of title insurance, as well...