It’s that time of year again. The fall conferences are, for the most part, over. The holiday season is just about upon us. It’s forecasting and budgeting time. And it’s time to review the wins and challenges of the year.
A lot of people will have a lot of predictions and forecasts about 2021 over the next six weeks. We at TrueFocus think it’s just as important to ask the right questions—such as, which part of my title agency workflow could really use some streamlining and automation!
But for purposes of this posting, here are the questions we’re hopeful and, for the most part, excited to see the answers for in and about the title industry in 2022.
Will this be the year that more title agencies than not really get serious about automating their workflows beyond just the production systems?
Is the refinance boom really, truly dead (for now)? We still know of businesses doing as much refinance work as purchase.
Will RON and eClosing technology, which has been talked about so much—if not adopted on as widespread a basis as would appear—finally take significant steps toward wide adoption?
Will the overall mortgage industry finally take significant steps away from the siloed approach we often take when it comes to the transaction? Will new and better technology combined with the pressures of margin compression force lenders, title agents and other participants to finally scrutinize the links in the workflow that cause some of the biggest delays and chokepoints: the places of collaboration and interaction between those participants?
Will WFH remain the norm—or remain at all—as the impact of the pandemic (hopefully) continues to fade? Will new technology emerge to support that?
Will the aggressive M&A activity—title and mortgage side—of 2021 continue into 2022?
Will the title industry contract with the market and, if so, who will the “winners” be?
And finally, of most interest to us, naturally…will the title industry recognize that “bots” (digital workers) and RPA could very well be the customizable, affordable answers they’ve been seeking to digitize and automate their processes, saving time and tremendous expense in the process?
Time will tell!
