Title Insurance Industry Initiatives

Because my company is mainly in the business of performing real estate settlements and issuing title insurance policies, there is a body of information we have to obtain from the public records, and also a body of information (deeds, mortgages, releases, easements, etc.) we have to put back into the public records. In 1982, when the first insurance privacy laws appeared, we thought everything we handled was public information. We would search the public land records and put the information we found into the title insurance policy. We then would handle the closing, and we believed the only thing we ever touched was public information.

GLB, however, forced us to look at everything more closely. We realized there were some surprising things in the title insurance policy that technically were nonpublic personal information, even though the information would not normally be considered sensitive. This meant, though, that we had to take extra care to prevent the policy from getting improperly into circulation because of the possibility that some bit of nonpublic information would be shared.

Also, in the context of the closing, we do receive a quite a bit of important information. The title insurance business helps make sure a real estate closing goes smoothly. We deal mainly with real estate information, but also with some financial information. We don't ordinarily have access to income figures, but it could happen. We could get our hands on a credit report, but most of the information in our system is real estate information related to the real property that the customer is buying or mortgaging. We often get nonpublic personal information we don't want or need. GLB has caused us and a lot of other financial institutions to ask questions about the contents of our files and the protection the information deserves. Obviously, a well-tuned document retention/destruction program is an important part of a successful privacy program.

Currently we are trying to make all of the pertinent information fit into a database so the information is entered one time, allowing the system to generate documents and make calculations without the necessity of further re-keying. We would also like to create a database that provides those people who are parties to the transaction access, but only to the information they need, so they can check the progress, as well as add to the posted information.

Privacy concerns will affect the way we implement this goal. We obviously must worry about granting database access to the right people while ensuring that each person can read only the appropriate information. Not everyone involved in the transaction needs access to every piece of information. For instance, we might want the person who supplies the appraisal for the real estate closing to be able to confirm that we've received it, but that person obviously doesn't need to know the loan's interest rate. So our concern becomes making sure they can get into the system but retrieve only the information they need.

Technology is a versatile tool. It allows us to collect, sort, and retrieve information and documents. It also allows us to open the files to interested parties, while blocking access to certain information. In some very important ways, privacy policy is implemented by electronic means.