TitleVest Saves $330,000 per Year by Outsourcing Document Scanning & Indexing of Closed Title Files

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Case Study at a Glance

Challenge

  • Ensure continued level of superior customer service amidst explosive growth
  • Gain immediate access to ever growing population of closed title search documents

Solution

  • Outsource scanning of closed title files to MetaSource’s SOC 2 Type 2 scanning facility
  • Merge scanned documents with clients’ electronic records for immediate retrieval from the computer

Impact

  • $330,000 in annual savings
  • Strengthens competitive advantage
  • Access to client’s entire digital file in seconds
  • “Responsive in the moment” to client requests and questions

Executive Summary

A downside of explosive growth can be an explosion in paperwork that, if not proactively managed, increases the risk of unnecessary costs, employee inefficiency, and weak customer service.

To continue its legacy of creating raving fans of clients, TitleVest proactively sought a way to manage their dramatically increasing title search document volume. By using MetaSource’s offsite document scanning services, TitleVest has found the way to optimize their post-closing process and now saves approximately $330,000 per year as a result. The breakdown:

  • $200,000 in reclaimed office space
  • $110,000 in recouped employee productivity
  • $20,000 in reduced offsite storage and retrieval costs

The best part: TitleVest enhanced its hyper-responsivity to client inquiries with MetaSource’s help, furthering their competitive advantage in customer service.

Challenge

After a decade of 40% year-over-year annual growth, even through the recession, TitleVest found itself “bursting at the seams.” More and more employees were hired to process hundreds of transactions per day and to ensure continued delivery of superior customer service even after the closing. To do so, each file remained in the office so that TitleVest could answer post-closing questions promptly. As a result, TitleVest needed new office space to accommodate both rapid employee growth and post-closing title paperwork—an unpleasant prospect given real estate prices in the prime Manhattan marketplace.

Prior to 2011, closed files were sent to offsite storage after six months. When TitleVest needed to answer a customer question beyond this point, the file was called back, which meant that it was manually located in the outsourced box storage warehouse and delivered. This became an issue when a few files needed per week turned into several boxes needed per day. Since these documents took at least a few hours, if not days, to arrive, especially when the storage vendor initially sent the wrong box, TitleVest wanted to provide a higher level of service to answer their clients’ post-closing questions. So, they turned to MetaSource.

Solution

Having already engaged with MetaSource on other projects, including the scanning of co-op and condo offering plans, TitleVest called in MetaSource to explore post-closing file scanning options. MetaSource reviewed example files and quickly developed a system that creates a digital copy of every document in five easy steps:

  1. TitleVest sends post-closing files to MetaSource (10-20 boxes per week) in color coded folders, each color pertaining to a different component of a file’s lifecycle.
  2. MetaSource prints color-coded barcode sheets that correspond to the color-coded folders that are inserted into every folder file for automatic indexing during scanning.
  3. MetaSource scans the files at their secure SOC 2 Type 2 facility and provides additional indexing following scanning.
  4. MetaSource sends two of the five transaction components which contain original copies (easily identified by folder color) directly to offsite, long-term storage on behalf of TitleVest, saving them that step in the process. Three of the five document types are then shredded.
  5. MetaSource securely delivers a PDF of every document to TitleVest for storage on their file server, as well as a catalog of all boxes and files sent to offsite storage. MetaSource also retains an additional offsite backup for TitleVest.

Impact

Today, all of the paper documents TitleVest receives are scanned and merged with clients’ electronic files—e.g. correspondence, copies of corporate organizational documents, estate/trust proceedings, foreclosure proceedings, court/legal papers, and large format original surveys that MetaSource scans on specialty wide format scanners.

This greatly reduces TitleVest’s paper footprint in the office, which equates to approximately $200,000 in real estate savings per year. As a result of document digitization, office space has been reclaimed from filing cabinets and storage boxes and has been repurposed for revenue-generating employees, and an additional 8,000 square feet is no longer needed.

Using MetaSource has reduced the volume of documents that need to be sent to offsite storage by 80%. TitleVest had been storing all of their closed title documents in offsite storage, but because they are not original documents, the vast majority of them can now be shredded after scanning, leaving only 20% that require long-term storage. Being able to search and retrieve digital files has also dramatically reduced the number of boxes pulled from warehouse storage, as well as the costs to do so. The total offsite storage savings equates to $20,000 per year.

TitleVest can now pull up a client’s entire digital file in seconds and respond to requests over the phone rather than getting back to the client hours or sometimes days later. “This allows us to be responsive in the moment, whether we are processing a new order or responding to a post-closing inquiry,” according to TitleVest COO and EVP, Brian Tormey.

Tormey goes on to describe MetaSource’s solution as “hugely appreciated by the staff and unknowingly by clients” adding, “When we get a call from the client, it’s not just the pleasure of solving their issue then and there (they expect it to take a few days), but we don’t have to hang up the phone and have a whole series of tasks we have to do, saving each employee 15-20 minutes per request at least a few times a day, across our client-facing employees.” This equates to over $110,000 per year of recouped productivity, and builds upon TitleVest’s competitive customer service advantage.

What’s next for TitleVest? As they continue to adapt technologies that further heighten their exemplary customer service, MetaSource will continue to help them find ways to do so with cloud document management, workflow automation, and other document imaging solutions.

About TitleVest

Founded in 2000, TitleVest is a leading New York City-based title insurance agency and member of the First American (NYSE: FAF) family of companies, offering a full range of title insurance and related services for real estate property purchase and refinance transactions. TitleVest has earned the New York Law Journal’s Best Title Agency award every year since 2013, as determined by its annual reader survey.

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About MetaSource

MetaSource delivers intelligent document management, workflow automation, and business process management solutions to help organizations streamline processes, ensure compliance, and improve efficiency. With over 30 years of experience, MetaSource successfully meets enterprise needs with secure, reliable software and managed services.

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