We’re proud to share that Jay Roberts, FAN and PDS Chief Technology Officer, recently had his thoughts and insights published in Housing Wire, one of our industry’s leading trade publications. We’re grateful to Housing Wire for giving Jay the platform, and we think the piece reflects exactly the kind of thinking that drives how we approach our work every day.
The article tackles something the title world can often underexplain: the fraud prevention work that happens in every transaction, entirely out of view of the buyers, sellers and lending partners sitting at the closing table. Most people who close on a home come away with a (relatively) clear picture of what title professionals do on the surface (closing). The deeper work, the signature analysis, the chain-of-title scrutiny and the wire fraud defense protocols, rarely gets the attention it deserves.
Jay makes the case that this invisible layer of protection is arguably the most important thing a title professional does. As he puts it in the piece, title agents are running “a trained, systematic effort to detect fraud before it can do damage” on every file, whether anyone notices or not. That’s not something we take likely at FAN, NTS or PDS. It reflects years of investment in training, technology and compliance infrastructure that we believe makes our clients’ transactions safer.
The article covers two broad areas of fraud risk that title professionals navigate regularly. One involves document forgery, including schemes where bad actors attempt to transfer ownership of properties they don’t own, often targeting vacant land or unoccupied homes where the real owner is less likely to catch the problem quickly. The other involves wire fraud, particularly Business Email Compromise, where fraudsters attempt to redirect closing funds by compromising email communications between transaction parties.
For an industry that spends a lot of energy talking about efficiency and technology, the protective function of title professionals is probably the most underappreciated part of the value we deliver. Jay’s piece is a step toward changing that, and we hope it reaches the lenders, real estate professionals and consumers who would benefit most from understanding what’s really happening behind the scenes.
You can read the full article here.