FNF Group, which is the tracking stock for the title insurance business at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Fidelity National Financial Inc., had fourth-quarter net earnings of $231 million. This is an improvement of 60% compared with $144 million for the same period last year.
The title insurance business reported $360 million in pretax earnings, up from $216 million one year ago. This unit also includes FNF subsidiary, ServiceLink, which had adjusted pretax earnings of $25 million, and Fidelity National Financial's
Subsequent to the end of the quarter, ServiceLink was
BKFS reported its own results, with net earnings of $11.8 million for the fourth quarter, up from $9.8 million for the same period of 2015.
FNF had 474,000 direct orders for title searches opened during the period, compared with 441,000 for the fourth quarter of 2015.
"We continue to benefit from a solid residential purchase market, as open and closed purchase orders grew by 5% and 10%, respectively, in the fourth quarter. The residential refinance market also finished the year strong, with 13% growth in open refinance orders and 47% growth in closed refinance orders. Total commercial revenue of $285 million was our second highest quarterly figure ever and a 6% decline from the record fourth quarter of 2015," Fidelity National Financial Chairman William Foley said in a press release. Foley is also the executive chairman at BKFS.
The title group also took a $97 million pretax credit to reduce a redundancy in its reserve for title claim losses, Foley added.
In its release BKFS announced that effective Jan. 1, employees responsible for title plant posting and maintenance were transferred to FNF. But BKFS will continue to own the plant technology and retain the sales responsibility for dealing with other title underwriters.
FNF will be charged a license fee for use of the technology to access and maintain the title plant data.
