Insuring Correct Information

Arkansas-based title company, Community Title & Escrow, uses DocuWare to manage and store their vast database of property records. The solution allowed them to grow their business to 3 additional counties by giving employees shared access to one database of information. By reducing their turnaround time to under 48 hours, the company gained a huge competitive advantage. Secure document management also streamlined regulation compliance and the completion of audits.

Founded in 1886, Community Title & Escrow (CTE) provides title insurance for properties located in Clay, Greene, Craighead and Poinsette counties, in Northeast Arkansas. The company maintains its own archive of every land transaction in the area since the early 1800s when records were first kept. Document types include: maps, deeds, lawsuit notices, judgements, liens and more.

Requirements

When Van Winton took over the family title business in the mid-90s, researching ownership of a piece of property was a manual process. Documents were geographically indexed in “tract books” that directed employees to numbered boxes or binders to access the physical documents which make up the chain-of-title. As CTE grew and acquired other title companies, manually maintaining all these records became very difficult.

Solution

At a state convention, Winton saw a demo of document management software and knew this was what he needed to modernize his company. CTE chose to implement DocuWare because of its security, ease-of-use and flexibility and the fact that it had been in use for more than decade. In addition, DocuWare’s scalability features have been able to keep pace with CTE’s continued growth during this time.

Today, CTE’s database has grown to contain over 40 million images. They index 1,500 multi-page documents, or about 5,000 pages, a day with 20 different index fields. Staff members digitally highlight information on the document to tag it as an index field, speeding the process and eliminating manual re-entry errors.

Local county courthouses maintain the legal record of property transfers by storing the information only alphabetically by the buyer or grantee name. CTE’s documents are not only indexed alphabetically but also by the actual legal description and various other information contained in the recorded instruments providing them with complete and easy to follow chain-of-title for each property.

“We have a digital copy of every document on file in each court house. Our database is easy to search. Our documents are scanned and indexed by property description and the parties’ names,” said Van Winton, President and Owner of Community Title & Escrow.

Benefits

With DocuWare, CTE can research a property’s history and create the title insurance document in less than 48 hours, versus 4-7 days for other companies that do not maintain their own records.

“Having our own database or title plant is the key to our success. Without our own database, we would have two choices: lease access to a title plant which could cost upwards of $20,000 a month, or rely on the county courthouse records and increase our property research time frame and the possibility of errors going undetected. With DocuWare in place, we have a low operating cost and are able to provide our clients with a quick turn-around. Both of these factors give us a huge competitive advantage,” said Winton.

As the company expanded into new counties and acquired other title companies and their documents, they were able to scan or import those new documents into DocuWare. CTE stores information in one trusted system, regardless of source. Even the very oldest records from the 1800s have been scanned and are managed with DocuWare. Because these records are infrequently accessed, they were not indexed, but using DocuWare’s fulltext search feature CTE can find what they are looking for every time.

“If we were still manually indexing information in tract books, we would not be able to keep up with the volume of information we receive. With DocuWare in place, we’ve expanded our business and reassigned two-thirds of Title department employees to other departments. DocuWare has improved our efficiency and allows us to effortlessly keep up with volume of documents we receive from the courthouses to add to our database,” exclaimed Winton.

The company’s 20 employees from across 4 branch offices all have access to the information in DocuWare, allowing CTE to balance workloads among employees in different offices.

The solution also helps CTE meet regulations established by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal agency who ensures that all consumers have access to markets for consumer financial products and services that are fair, transparent, and competitive. One regulation requires a minimum 30 year search for each property. CTE prints a report in DocuWare about the search and adds this report to the property’s record. DocuWare also helps the company comply with other regional regulations and streamlines its yearly audit by AIM+, the company’s closing software.

Conclusion

In conclusion Winton said, “In the world of title insurance, you can’t be close, you have to be right! DocuWare is easy to use, very accurate and can handle a large volume of records. It is a core piece of our IT infrastructure.”

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