In 2013, the American Land Title Association (ALTA) released a series of Best Practices, which all title insurance and settlement agents are encouraged to follow to ensure the protection of the consumer and to meet legal and market requirements. Although these practices are voluntary, the stricter regulatory environment put in play by the 2010 Dodd Frank Act has made it imperative for all participants in the real estate conveyancing process to adhere to the highest standards of professionalism. In addition, regulations and guidance issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the past few years have placed an onerous responsibility on lenders to ensure their third-party vendors are meeting the new standards.
In releasing the guidelines, ALTA has provided a framework within which agents can structure their processes and procedures to make certain they are adhering to the highest standards now deemed essential by their lender customers. To emphasize the critical importance of ALTA’s Best Practices, one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country released a communiqué to its settlement agents in March 2014 indicating it would be “monitoring and measuring” its third-party providers for compliance to these new practices. The lender specifically called for written policies and procedures to document adherence, and inspection processes to further validate compliance.
North American Title Insurance Company considers the ALTA Best Practices to be critically important not only for compliance purposes, but to ensure the success of its agents with its lender customers. In addition to providing the ALTA Best Practices on our website, we have created a Best Practices section of the
Agent Link site, where we provide our agents with a wide range of tools to help you meet and exceed each of the seven guidelines. Please click on the links below to review each of the ALTA Best Practices.