Title Agent Data Collection
One of the biggest challenges we face in the title business is combing through historical documents, often from poorly scanned images or, in some cases, from the original recorded documents, and faithfully and accurately transmitting that information into electronic form.
Trying to get accurate data from deeds, contracts or legal descriptions can often be exacerbated by old and illegible handwritten notes.
As time goes on, this problem will be eased by the increasing percentage of electronically recorded real estate documents that will be far easier to translate. In the meantime, transforming this historical and necessary information into an electronic and usable format remains a time-consuming headache.
Now, add to the mix the myriad of data coming into a title agent from real estate professionals, LOs, consumers and even other title agents. This information isn’t coming in one neat, standardized form. The typical title agency receives social security numbers, status requests, name corrections and all kinds of other sensitive NPI by way of email, phone call, text message, sticky note, Facebook message….maybe even carrier pigeon or hand delivery! In the past, it fell to an employee to manually input this hodge-podge of vital information into the production system or appropriate platform.
What we can seek to avoid is creating more manual challenges than we already face.
The manual challenges
Fuzzy images continue to be a challenge, and while optical character imaging (OCR) has come a long way, the poor quality of many scanned images has resulted in the corruption of data translated to an electronic platform.
There is still a need for human eyes on the information and a constant dedication to verification and cross-checking to make sure it all matches. Nowhere is this more critical than in signature verification from original contracts, deeds and mortgage documents that contain a wet signature.
All that is a given.
But the inconvenient truth is that we are often still allowing ourselves to be dependent on taking down information over the phone or translating information from a text to a computer. (Let’s not even get into the problem of autocorrect distorting information before we then make the unfortunate mistake of inputting the erroneous information into an electronic document.)
This is not only time-consuming but subject to human error. The only way to minimize the errors is to automate, as far as possible, original data capture.
Automating Data Input
Title companies and mortgage lenders are increasingly trying to streamline data capture to increase accuracy. While there is little that can be done about historical documents, there are steps title companies can take to ensure current input is as accurate as possible.
A lot of information comes to real estate agents, lenders and title agents at the outset of the transaction. A lot of this data gathering is done in person and manually. This data then has to be input into the system. Sometimes, clients are sent home with documents to fill out, but they may not have an easy way to scan and return those documents, and even if they do, they still must be translated into the title system.
All of this can be avoided by having a client directly upload their information into the system. It bypasses unnecessary human handling of data and avoids a lot of misinterpretation and translation errors.
In addition, clients have to read and sign a lot of disclosure documents and that is a difficult process to navigate in person, at an office, when everybody is in a hurry and sometimes stressed.
However, sending them a link to fill out and sign documents online, allows them to work through the documents at their leisure and in a more relaxed and attentive atmosphere.
This is one of the biggest advantages of partnering with Alanna.ai.
With Alanna.ai, you can easily text your clients a link to fill out documents digitally and when they submit the form, the data goes directly into your title production system. There’s no better way to save staff time and delight clients in the process.
Call us today to learn more!