The American Land Title Association (ALTA), the national trade association of the land title insurance industry, announced today that SafeChain will integrate the national ALTA Registry into its real estate wire fraud prevention platform SafeWire™. Through the integration, mortgage lenders will be able to search the Registry and verify the identity of title insurance agents and settlement companies, providing an enhanced level of efficiency and security to the real estate transaction.
“The national ALTA Registry is a unique real estate utility created specifically for mortgage lenders,” said Paul Martin, ALTA’s Registry Director. “We’re pleased to offer this tool to SafeChain as it looks to deliver innovative products to its customers. The emergence of the ALTA Registry as an effective and easy to use source of data and information comes at the perfect time to help counter the alarming increase in wire fraud.”
ALTA launched the ALTA Registry in 2017 as the first national database of title insurance agents and settlement companies. In addition to contact information and branch locations for agents and title companies, each ALTA Registry listing also includes a title agent or real estate attorney’s unique seven-digit ALTA ID. As most real estate wire fraud schemes involve spoofing the identity of the title and/or settlement agent involved in transaction, the ability to verify the identity of these individuals using the ALTA ID and contact information contained within the ALTA Registry provides added assurance that lenders are interacting with legitimate parties to the transaction.
“With wire fraud on the rise, everyone in the real estate transaction – lenders included – must increase their level of vigilance to maintain the integrity of the process,” said Tony Franco, SafeChain co-founder and CEO. “Integrating the ALTA Registry ALTA ID into SafeWire enhances the level of security we’re able to provide to all parties, bringing us one step closer to completely eliminating fraud in the wire transfer process.”
Learn more about the ALTA Registry by visiting www.altaidregistry.org.