As a bit of an insider in the California market and with this title firm, I've seen this coming for 20 years.
The initial round of consolidation of title plants across counties into a single mega-complex was a sign of cost cutting: no rent in 58 counties, just one warehouse to pay for.
Then they eliminated title officers in favor of inexperienced, minimum wage workers.
Then they eliminated the employees, favoring third party temp agencies who could staff them while they used this as a tax write-off (cost of doing business...paying the temp agency).
Then they offshored to the Phillipines and India (most reports returning up to a dozen times before they were considered "right").
All the while, they had seminars that transforned the perspective of their workers from preventing claims loss through good policy work, to embracing claims as good as it shows the state insurance commissioner that they don't need added scruitiny and can be trusted to pay off claims. The upfront cost of protecting against liability by paying employees for work, versus cutting those costs and paying claims which later become corporate tax welfare (deductions), is the ratio being worked out by the title insurers. One does it and the rest follow like lemmings to be competitive. Sad really.
One of the worst things about all of this is that the vast databases of easy to use arbitrary account books languish in warehouses, unused, because nobody has been trained to use them in their temp agency workforce, and the few title officers remaining have no time to properly investigate any title discrepencies that cross their desk. They are forced to work long hours, pass on things that are knowingly incomplete or wrong, and manage staffs of people who continually say things like "well, the computer said this so it must be right". Furthermore, all reliance is place on their internal records even when a few minutes of free, online county databases (Grantor-Grantee Indices of Official Records on the web) would be enough of a cross-check to prevent many claims. Free, in this case, still requires two brain cells and a few more minutes that would all cost precious money deducted from someones golden parachute.
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