Stewart Title Guaranty Co. has created a Trusted Provided Program, where those agencies and attorney agents who pass the screening can show consumers a seal proving they have been vetted and verified.
According to one title agency owner, this is something that the title underwriters should be doing all along. In recent months title agents have been up in arms over an independent company, Secure Settlements Inc., which has been reaching out to lenders to use its services to vet people and companies who close loans.
George Houghton, group president, agency operations for Stewart, said Trusted Provider “is our effort to continue to raise the bar for independent agencies and attorney agents in our network, and to elevate the professionalism and credibility of the title industry as a whole. And, to protect the investments of our customers.”
Among the requirements for the program is a third-party audit of the agency conducted by Deloitte & Touche.
Rafael Castellanos, the owner of Expert Title Insurance Agency in New York, said one of his issues with this program is who bears the cost of that audit. Most agencies are small to midsize businesses which normally can’t afford to use the services of a major accounting firm.
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There is speculation that this might be an attempt by Stewart to cut off SSI and similar firms. A request for comment by Stewart was not returned by publication time.
Expert Title is currently not an agency for Stewart.
In addition to the vetting, Stewart has a list of standards it wants agents to adhere to. But at the start of the year, the American Land Title Association issued its own best practices guide for agents and settlement service providers and the two are similar, Castellanos noted.
One question raised by Castellanos is if something does go wrong even after the agent has been vetted, will Stewart accept full liability for the agent’s actions?
Still he declared, “It is a not a bad thing as long as [the agents] are not going to bear an unfair financial cost of getting it done.”
