Thanks to data collected by our Operations and Customer Success teams, Jasper Bear, Director of Customer Success, shares six opportunities to ensure a more satisfying, successful signing process:
1. Send document packages as early in the transaction as possible.
“Our data tells us that most lenders send documents about an hour prior to the scheduled closing time. We have been proactively communicating to our customers that the sooner you can get document packages to us, the better. While some title companies request them at least 24 hours in advance, we would like to receive them at least four hours in advance. This usually gives us sufficient time to schedule notary service, and give the notary enough notice to get to the location on time.”
2. Ensure all vesting data is correct, and deliver it to us as early in the closing process as possible.
“If we get close to closing time and we don’t have the correct vesting information, we have to redo the docs, which delays everything. Our data tells us that many lenders do this in the final 10 days prior to the scheduled closing date. We recommend that lenders do this within the first 30 days of the closing process instead.”
3. Create clear, readable notary instructions and detailed checklists for them to follow.
“Every lender and title company’s set of instructions are different. We recommend providing notaries with a bullet-pointed checklist of tasks to complete and reminders for how to carry out the transaction. This reduces common errors or questions about the way lenders expect certain transactions, like those involving a trust, to be carried out.”
4. Work with reputable signing service providers that prescreen notaries and rate their ongoing performance.
“We use reputable services that rate their notaries from at least three to five stars. If a poor notary performance is noted and documented, we blacklist them.”
5. Clearly define the lender’s expectations for each transaction with detailed service-level agreements (SLAs) and continuously monitor their performance.
“The amount of data we track and share with our lenders is unprecedented in the title industry, and our data tells a compelling story. We monitor how often we are meeting each SLA, from scheduling, to commitment, to Closing Disclosure preparation, to commitment delivery, to clear to close. For example, a lender may require that CD prep takes four hours. We track how often we meet that goal, and identify and address any deficiencies if necessary.”
6. Use instant title solutions & cutting-edge technology to address some of the most common pain points in the notary process.
“These issues have been on the hit list of our founder and CEO, Max Simkoff, since he first envisioned a simpler, more modern closing experience. At the end of the day, you can attack these issues in a multimodal fashion that improves margins slightly, but until you leverage machine intelligence technology to streamline certain parts of the process, all you have done is put on lots of little Band-Aids.”
