CHENNAI: Spotting an opportunity to cut its costs by around 30 per cent with increased productivity, US-based insurer Fidelity National Title Group Inc has decided to scale up its business process outsourcing (BPO) and software development activities in India.

The company had set up its captive BPO company Fidelity National Financial India in Bangalore three years back.

The $4.6 million revenue Fidelity National Financial India has around 800 employees searching and confirming property titles in the US for its insurance parent.

“We will be increasing the headcount by 1,000 to 1,800 starting next year for our BPO operations so that we can shift work like accounts payable, legal operations here. We are also planning to expand the software development team here,” Senior Vice President Andy Giddings told IANS.

According to him, the insurer has decided to develop software for its core title insurance business back home out of India in May and formed a small team of 25 people.

“We will be expanding that team by adding 100 more software engineers during the first quarter of the next year. We have around 15 different software applications and we expect the number to go down with the development of integrated programmes,” Giddings said.

About BPO activity in India, he said the company has now graduated from doing indexing and data entry to detailed property title searches and other value added transactions like title policy underwriting and engineering, database management, mortgage and tax services.

“We have also changed the systems and procedures which in turned improved the productivity as well as the job content for the employees. The utilisation rate is around 90 percent whereas the average for other captive BPOs is around 50 percent,” added Country Head of Indian Operations Sameer Dhanrajani.

October 12, 2010

The owner of a Harvey’s Lake settlement company pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to stealing nearly $2 million from 92 victims over a three-year period.

Elizabeth Sichler, 58, owner of Priority Search Inc., failed to pay various obligations associated with real estate transactions that her company handled as a title agent between 2005 and 2008.

According to court documents, Sichler failed to pay sellers’ first and second mortgages, sellers’ cash proceeds, utility bills, property taxes, real estate transfer taxes, filing fees and title insurance premiums.

Instead, she used the funds dedicated for those purposes for personal gain and to cover operating expenses for her business, including employee salaries and benefits.

Sichler, who was charged in June, entered her guilty plea on wire fraud charges Tuesday before United States District Court Magistrate Judge Malachy E. Mannion.

She faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and a maximum of three years supervised release.

Posted via email from Title Insurance
Continuing Ed for Title Agents

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Disputes May Affect 9 Million Foreclosures, Morgan Stanley Says – Bloomberg

October 14, 2010 admin

As many as 9 million U.S. mortgages in the foreclosure pipeline or already through the process may face legal challenges because of questions about the validity of documents, according to Morgan Stanley.

About 2.5 million homes have been repossessed since 2005 and another 6.5 million mortgages are in foreclosure or may be soon, Morgan Stanley’s Oliver Chang, Vishwanath Tirupattur and James Egan wrote in a note today. The validity of documents used to verify ownership and payment obligations may be in question for each of those loans, Chang said.

“We are talking about some pretty big numbers,” Chang, a San Francisco-based housing strategist, said in a telephone interview today. “There’s a lot of developing aspects” to determine the actual impact, he said.

Lawmakers, state attorneys general and consumer groups have pressed mortgage firms to follow Bank of America Corp., which last week suspended all foreclosures to check whether faulty documents were used to confiscate homes. A worst-case scenario, in which questions of legitimacy arise beyond procedural issues and a freeze extends to all states and servicers, would lead to “a torrent” of eventual foreclosures, retroactive litigation on home seizures and a delay in the housing recovery, Morgan Stanley said.

In addition to Bank of America’s halt, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC Mortgage unit froze seizures or evictions in 23 states. There are about 3.3 million mortgages in foreclosure or more than 60 days past due in those states, according to New York-based Morgan Stanley.

via bloomberg.com

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Continuing Ed for Title Agents