Much of the value title professionals provide happens before a policy is ever issued. New First American research gives agents facts and perspective to help tell that story.
TL;DR:
Your customers may see a title policy at closing, but you know the work starts much earlier than that.
A lot of it happens behind the scenes, which can make the value of title difficult for customers and business partners to see. But every issue found and resolved before closing helps support a smoother transaction—and stronger property rights after the keys change hands.
The policy is only part of the value.
Title insurance is different from many other forms of insurance because so much of the work happens before a loss occurs.
That makes the industry’s relatively low claims rate an important point to put in context. Fewer claims don’t mean there’s little risk. They can reflect the search, examination, underwriting, and curative work that helped prevent known issues from turning into claims in the first place.
Put simply: a problem that gets resolved before closing is still a problem the title process helped solve.
What happens without the title industry.
First American estimates that without the industry’s search, examination, and curative work, potential title defect exposure across purchase and refinance transactions could average approximately $600 billion annually and exceed $1 trillion in higher-volume years.
Those numbers help put the preventative side of title insurance into perspective.
They also offer a response to a common misconception: that a relatively small number of claims means title risks are rare. In reality, part of the value lies in the issues that never make it that far.
Title insurance has 150 years behind it.
That preventative approach has been part of title insurance since the industry emerged 150 years ago.
Before title insurance, buyers and lenders commonly relied on an attorney’s opinion letter to support a clean transfer of ownership. Those opinions provided professional guidance, but they did not offer the same contractual protection or duty to defend.
Title insurance brought together careful title review with protection for owners and lenders—a combination that continues to define the model today.
The tools have changed dramatically since then. The basic idea hasn’t: identify and address problems where possible before closing, then provide coverage for covered risks that remain.
Help tell the story behind the policy.
When a lien is released, an ownership issue is resolved, or an error in the property record is corrected, that work can also make the record more reliable for the next owner, lender, or title professional.
Taken together, those individual efforts help support confidence in the property-rights system that real estate transactions depend on.
That’s a bigger story than a policy or a claim, and it’s one title professionals are uniquely positioned to tell.
Interested in learning more? First American’s new white paper provides additional facts and perspectives to help explain that value to customers, business partners, and others in your community.