query: the future of title insurance

Boy, you and me both, we could sure use a crystal ball now couldn't we?

We "traditional" title examiners and agents are operating in a strange industry quagmire in which our supposed leaders and purveyors of what we have to sell - the big title insurance companies - seem to be hell bent on destroying our product - title insurance.

This product which found its roots in the hands of carefully trained attorneys and conveyancers and examiners who had a love for the land and a respect for the quality and integrity of the conveyance process may not survive.

Title insurance has been bastardized by the so-called leaders of our industry and has been reduced to a vehicle for the payment and collection of referral cashola and laid out as the base for the creation of gold plated data silos.

Now, instead of spending energy and creative thought on the education and ethical conduct of title professionals, these "leaders", who are scofflaws themselves, expend all effort in the creation of more referral affiliations and teach how to skirt laws in the quest for cash and data for the silos.

It's a crime against the industry, it's a crime against consumers who deserve and need a quality product provided by ethical, well trained professionals, and it's a crime against those of us who chose what was once an honorable profession. We who made careers, loving and learning the laws governing real estate, have been sacrificed upon the rock of prostituted standards which sits in the church of greed.

I have hope that the future of title insurance will be saved by state and federal regulators who have the ability and motive to rein in the outlaws of title. We're not too far gone to restore a quality product of use to the consumer and we haven't yet lost the professionals who can train and mentor those who come behind us.