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Today, right now! How do we protect our clients, remain competitive, show continued knowledge, experience, expertise, service and technology and continue the growth that we have had for more than a quarter century, actually more than 26 years? We do this by expanding on our past use of "Best Practices."
"Best Practices" is a set of guidelines, ethics or ideas that represent the most efficient or prudent course of action, methods or techniques that show results superior to those achieved with other means and are used as a benchmark. In addition a "best" practice can evolve to become better as improvements are discovered. Best Practices are used to maintain quality as an alternative to mandatory legislated standards and can be based on self assessment or benchmarking. Best Practice is a feature of accredited management standards. Now, in this expanding regulatory environment is the time to review what the American Land Title Association calls "Best Practices."
The reason this is important is because of the enactment of the "Dodd - Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" in 2010. Then subsequently the creation of the "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau" and its actions and mandates telling "Lenders" what they must do to protect consumers . With that mandate the CFPB placed the burden of proof of compliance of these rules and regulation directly with the Lender. The "Lender" now becomes responsible for the action of its "vendors" i.e. settlement agents, title companies etc. So how does the Lender and consumer know the vendors are compliant with the new rules and regulations? They know that if their Settlement Agent or Title Company adheres to the "American Land Title Associations Best Practices," then their vendor is compliant with CFBP requirements.
So what are the "Seven Pillars" of the American Land Title Association Best Practices? Well, we will discuss them in our following blogs.
1. Best Practices: Establish and maintain current licenses as required to conduct the business of title insurance and settlement service. We will discuss #1 on the next blog.
- by Douglas D Boulden
