Happy Holidays from hal Systems!

As we enter into the Christmas season, your friends from hal Systems would like to extend warm wishes to you and yours. Thank you so much for making our 44th year successful. We couldn't have done it without you!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The halFILE Team

Register now for HUG 2017!

Don't miss out on the 2017 halFILE Users Group Conference (HUG) scheduled for October 11-13, 2017 at the beautiful Hotel Valencia! This boutique hotel is right on the Riverwalk, one of America's top tourist sites. 

Click here to register

Click here to view full agenda

Some sessions planned include:

• halFILE 4.1 ~ new release!
• New Starter System
• Separate training tracks for experts and beginners
• Disaster recovery planning

ATIM Conference

The Association for Title Information Management (ATIM) held its 30^th annual conference September 27-29 in beautiful Squaw Valley, CA, home of the 1960 Winter Olympic Games.

Here is my recap of the very informative sessions:

CFPB Impact on Title Plants

With CFPB implementation looming, Diane Evans (ALTA president and Vice President at Land Title Guarantee) and Penny Reed (Vice President at Wells Fargo) began the conference with a discussion on protecting non-public personal information (NPI). 

Penny addressed the need to protect data in transit, data at rest, and data in use. 

ü  System to system connections must be secure.  Vet your providers (e-Recording vendors and Recording offices passing documents directly to you) plus business partners (title plant subscribers) so that no one can exploit a weakness in a third party network to get to you.  This may be less of a concern if the data is public as is the case with recorded documents, but verify that nobody can get to trust account information etc. via the title plant.

ü  Transaction information required to perform a search prior to closing that is not public record (buyers names, purchase price, property) is absolutely considered private and must be protected from outside sources and employees not needing to use it.  Some are masking this type of information in order generation software and storage systems.

ü  Encrypt data in transit via email encryption tools.

Diane referred to ALTA’s best practice pillars as a resource. Both reminded the group of CFPB’s long reach and that it is funded solely through fines levied.  You need be able to describe and defend your practices in the event the chain of a breach leads back to you. 

Both provided examples of hazards happening in the industry today:

ü  Thieves are monitoring title orders trying to figure out when money will be deposited, wired etc. and hacking into accounts. Or they will change one letter or number of a party’s email account and send bogus wiring instructions to a lender, realtor or settlement agent.

ü  Ransomware attacks.

ü  Realtor email accounts seem particularly vulnerable to hacking and are being used to get access to other information.

 

Uniform Filing Fees:

Under the new CFPB regulations when closing costs fall outside compliance, lenders must refund over payments and absorb under payments. Also they are subject to penalties that could reach thousands of dollars per day/per instance if they are found non-compliant.

With approximately 3,600 recording jurisdictions in the United States, recording fees are very difficult to obtain and track.  A round table consisting of recording staff from four jurisdictions and Penny Reed from Wells Fargo discussed the importance of creating predictable recording fees. A few areas have instituted flat rate recording fees statewide. For example, $46 per document whether it is one page or twenty.  Most participants were open to the idea although the path to getting there will likely take time, a fee study and new legislation.

 

Redacting Public Records

Redaction of information from public records has grown from removing items like SSNs and credit card numbers on recorded documents to removing the names, addresses, and legal descriptions of entire groups of people such as public servants and abuse victims.  Whereas nobody wants to deny protection to those who need it, the integrity of land records must be retained.  Missing records have a detrimental effective on the ability to run a complete chain of title and insure property.

The session included an update of legislative trends across the country and brain storming alternatives. Famous people who make a living in the public eye often utilize trusts rather than take title in their name, but this can be expensive and confusing to the general public.

Automated Underwriting

A panel described an emerging trend of basing some underwriting decisions on search engine scoring results and other alternative methods to the traditional collection and review of land records.  The idea is not to replace examiners, but to utilize software that analyzes data from several sources then scores and ranks risk in order to facilitate routing the difficult orders to the most experienced examiners.  An example given was using credit report information on GI searches. A search on a very common name could return numerous liens. Rather than examining all of them, a determination could be made that your party/purchaser, with a 750 credit score, is low risk – either not the same person or likely to pay the debt if he/she is that person. Credit information, such as current/previous addresses and employers helps prove or disprove you party as being the same person with a lien.

Title Plant Variances

A discussion on different types of title plants used throughout the country for examination such as thin, thick, and starters.  The differences were discussed along with pros and cons of each and impact, if any, on claim rates.

 

Economic Perspectives 2015

Pat Stone, CEO of Williston Financial Group, shared his insight on areas impacting real estate and title insurance industries. The presentation included a recap of GDP through Q2 of 2015, the changing landscape of single family home building, unemployment rate versus underemployment, trends in housing starts and other issues/challenges.  His overall economic outlook seemed optimistic although he stated that ‘all bets are off’ if another government shutdown happens.

Interested in getting more information on ATIM?  Contact me or visit the web site:  www.atim.org

Kathy Taylor

ktaylor@halfile.com

 

 

 

Forty years and still kickin'

What do red wine, leather boots and halFILE have in common? They only get BETTER with age!  This year, we're celebrating hal Systems' 40th birthday.

Kick back with us at the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas at HUG 2014 – halFILE Users Group Conference October 1-3! We’ll be celebrating with a Welcome Reception on Wednesday night, followed by 2 days of interactive training on our software.

   

Its our big 4-0, as in halFILE 4.0 – BIGGER, STRONGER, and FASTER than ever!

• BIGGER: Returns ten times as many rows!
• STRONGER: One click sorting of hit list rows, reorder hit list columns!
• FASTER: Return rows with exponential speed!       

halFILE has never been BETTER. Join the party!

---

HUG Conference Details

When:
Wednesday, October 1 - Friday, October 3, 2014

Where:
Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk Hotel, San Antonio, TX

Registration Info:
$475 per person (Early Bird Registration is $375 before 8/25) This includes the Welcome Reception Wednesday evening, continental breakfast Thursday and Friday mornings, lunch on Thursday, and a group dinner Thursday evening. We are excited to offer an $100 Early Bird Discount to anyone who registers by August 25, reducing the cost to $375 for the full HUG 2014 conference. Click here to register online today!

Hotel Reservations:
The Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk is located along the San Antonio River Walk, just a stone’s throw from the Alamo. Room reservations can be made directly with the hotel by calling 800.421.1442and referring to the group meeting halFILE Users Group/HUG Rate, or by using the hotel's online event registration service. The room rate for HUG attendees is $199/night (taxes not included). Reservations must be made by September 15, 2014 to obtain the special rate. Make sure to reserve a room soon as hotel space can fill up!

Tourism in San Antonio:
We've also made a few rooms available 3 days before and 3 days after the conference at our special rate for anyone who would like to turn the trip into a vacation. San Antonio is known not only for the Alamo, but also the famous River Walk, the trail of Spanish Missions, the Mexican Cultural Center, Sea World Amusement Park, and amazing Mexican and haute cuisine food.  Check out the visitors and tourism website, www.visitsanantonio.com, to find out about the interesting, fun and historic activities San Antonio has to offer.

We hope you join us i n celebrating our 40th Anniversary and HUG 2014! If you have any questions, please feel free to call your halFILE Imaging Consultant, Kathy Taylor 303.791.5688 or Dave Persful 214.466-6535, or contact Karen Duncan via email at kduncan@halfile.com.
 

We look forward to seeing you in San Antonio in October!

HUG 2014 on Pinterest

Wondering what to do when you are at the halFILE User's Group Conference in San Antonio in October? Get ideas from our Pinterest site. 

Join us for HUG 2014 in October!

Join us in sunny San Antonio this fall for the 2014 HALFILE USERS GROUP conference.

Prepare for the hal 4.0 rollout with our training sessions on new and existing features, connect to other halFILE users, and enjoy the backdrop of the River Walk, the Alamo, and all San Antonio has to offer.

• Who: halFILE Users
• What: HUG Conference
• When: October 1-3, 2014
• Where: San Antonio, TX

Full agenda and registration information coming soon

2013 Land Title Conferences Update

The spring, summer and fall months offer multiple opportunities to catch up with valued clients and network with potential clients at industry trade shows.   Unfortunately, conferences often overlap which limits the number we can attend, but here are a few recent or upcoming shows in the land title industry that are included in my plans:

ALTA

Dave and I exhibited at the ALTA Business Strategies conference in Oklahoma City March 13-15.  The format gave attendees several opportunities to interact with the exhibitors in addition to learning more about ALTA’s Best Practices and the National Title Professional designation program. It gave us the opportunity to showcase halFILE version 4. Congratulations to Marianne with FNF who won our raffle prize (a Kindle Fire).  To learn more about ALTA, visit www.alta.org

Iowa Land Title Association:

ILTA’s annual conference will be held May 3-4 at Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino Hotel in Altoona.   Visit www.iowalandtitle.org for details.

South Dakota Land Title:
The annual conference will be held June 5-7 at the Highland Center in Mitchell.  Visit www.sdlta.org for details.

ATIM
Are you familiar with the Association for Title Information Management (ATIM)?

Since 1985 ATIM (a non-profit association run entirely by volunteers) has organized an annual meeting that enables land title professionals to learn from each other, share best practices, and brainstorm solutions to industry issues and challenges. 

A typical conference agenda includes six to eight topics affecting the land records / title insurance and abstract industries. Discussions are facilitated by industry experts.  Past topics have included discussions on title plant best practices, open records issues, privacy/redaction concerns, outsourcing (both off shore and domestic) and industry trends.

Attendees typically include title/abstract company owners, managers and examiners; software application developers, title plant and other land records data providers, outsourcing vendors, vendor managers, underwriters, consultants, lenders, county clerks and recorders, plus others parties with an interest in land records.

The format is one general session. The casual atmosphere supports active participation from everyone.  The host city varies from year to year based on input from participants.  The registration fee is designed to cover costs and is minimal.

I think you would benefit from attending and I know the group would benefit from your participation.  The 2013 conference is in Boston on August 5 and 6. Please visit the web site after May 1^st for registration forms, hotel information and the agenda: www.atim.org.  Feel free to contact me with any questions.

 Kathy Taylor

ktaylor@halfile.com

 

PRIA Winter Symposium

Over 120 people attended the PRIA Winter Symposium last week in Washington D.C.  Here are some highlights:

 

ü  The Washington D.C. Recorder of Deeds Office hosted a visit that included an office tour along with a fascinating presentation on the history of the office and office holders/Recorders.

ü  Updates on everything “e”:  sessions on eRecording from a submitter’s perspective, eMortgages, eSigning, and a discussion on the ultimate e-Recording wish list.

ü  A panel discussion on a National Mortgage database.

ü  A panel presentation on title plants – what they are & how they operate (my favorite session!)

ü  PRIA Committee working sessions.

ü  Breakfast roundtable discussions along with several other networking opportunities.

 

To obtain membership information, visit the PRIA web site:  www.pria.us

The Colorado PREP Chapter is meeting on March 21^st from 9:00 – 11:00 and will include a presentation on GIS and Land Records.  Contact me for details if you are interested in attending.

Next week (March 13-15) Dave and I will be exhibiting at the ALTA Business Strategies conference in Oklahoma City.  Stop by our booth and take a peek at halFILE version 4.0!

 

Kathy Taylor

ktaylor@halfile.com

 

Season's Greetings

Season's Greetings from hal Systems
 

click here

If you work with public land records, check out PRIA and PREP

hal Systems is a  member of several professional trade organizations.  PRIA and PREP have provided me with several educational and networking opportunities over the past few years, so I wanted to pass along some basic information in case you are not familiar with these forums:

PRIA (Property Records Industry Association) is a group of professionals from both government and business sectors with a shared interest in the integrity of public records.  They work together to address common issues and concerns.   

PRIA officially launched in 2002.  It evolved out of a task force initially created for a specific time frame and purpose.    The PRIA web site contains a wealth of information, including white papers outlining standards and best practices that have been developed through a collaborative effort by PRIA members.    Several documents are devoted to eRecording and include how to prepare, business requirements, and XML standards along with an implementation guideline.   You’ll also find information on GIS integration with land records, notary essentials and practical considerations with regard to privacy and public land records.  Current projects include papers on redaction and eRecording portals.

PRIA holds conferences twice a year.  These events combine educational seminars, business meetings and networking opportunities.  The 2012 annual conference was held in Memphis, August 28-30, where I attended sessions on MERS, Title insurance 101, Cloud technologies, GIS, and eRecording excellence.

 PREP (Property Records Education Partners) is a PRIA initiative that strives to foster relationships, enhance communication, and create networking channels and educational opportunities on local levels.  There are PREP chapters in AZ, CA, CO, DC, FL, GA, IA, IL, MD, MI, MN, NE, ND, NV, OK, OR, PA, TN, TX, VA, WA and WI.

PRIA has several membership categories available for both government and private sectors.  There is no cost to participate in PREP, and you do not have to be a member of PRIA to participate in PREP. 

Feel free to contact me with questions and visit the PRIA web site for additional information (www.pria.us). 

 

Kathy Taylor

ktaylor@halfile.com

 

Auto Complete - halFILE 4.0

We have been hard at work adding the finishing touches to a new feature in 4.0 called Auto Complete.  This feature has been requested by many of you over the years and we hope you enjoy using it.  This feature allows you to perform key ahead retrieval of information that already exists in a database field.  This is especially useful in fields that contain names as it allows you to see how that particular name was indexed previously and improves keying accuracy.  The example below illustrates how I can start keying  a name and I see anything that matches currently in the database:

As you can see this is helpful both at index and search time as it allows you to pick from a list of previously indexed items.  It can also be beneficial in locating and identifying existing typos in the database.  This all happens in real-time so if you find a typo, search for it, and update all existing entries then the next time you use the auto complete feature the typo will not appear in the list.  If you already have halFILE 4.0 you can access this feature by pressing F4 when the cursor is blinking inside any multi-entry field.  If you are not already using halFILE 4.0 be sure to send James an email at jtabor@halfile.com and he will get you on the list!

halFILE 4.0 Release - July 17th, 2012

We are very pleased to announce that we will officially be releasing halFILE 4.0 tomorrow morning.  At the end of day we will have 50 desktops functioning with the new version.  Many thanks to our Beta testers both internal and external that have provided feedback on the new release.  We hope you enjoy the new features and hope to continue to add new functionality based on your input as we continue to grow with this new version.  Don't forget to prepare your desktops for 4.0 by going to http://update.halfile.com and installing the prerequisites.  This will greatly assist us in migrating you to the new release.  Be sure to e-mail James Tabor if you want to get on the list to obtain 4.0.

halFILE 4.0 Prerequisites

Get an early start on your transition to halFILE 4.0.  Just click here: http://update.halfile.com and you will be able to install the prerequisites on your workstations in preparation for the upcoming release of halFILE 4.0.  This will be a required first step for anyone wishing to upgrade to halFILE 4.0  If you would like to get on the list of early adopters please email support@halfile.com and let us know.

Spring Road Trips!

Greetings... April and May have given me the opportunity to visit with some great people.  Here's a summary:

Tehama County (Red Bluff), CA

On April 18^th Richard Hahn and I visited with hal System clients in the Tehama County Tax Collector and Assessor offices. They took time away from their demanding schedules to meet with us and allowed us to observe their workflow. We answered some questions, made a few recommendations, and came away with some great ideas.

On the following day, the Tehama County Recorder’s office graciously hosted a meeting.  Patrick Honny (Executive Director with CeRTNA), Richard and I spent the day with hal clients from 6 northern CA Recorder offices.

We began with a tour and e-Recording demonstration.  Tehama County has been beta testing the hal-CeRNTA G2G interface over the past several months, beginning with electronic submissions from the CA Board of Equalization, followed by the Department of Employment.  The demo illustrated how much time electronic submissions save.  The Recorder's office is looking forward to adding more government submitters followed by full ERDS.

During lunch the group shared and compared how halFILE is being utilized within various county departments.  Afterward we focused on some of the new features bundled into CountyCashier 3.5 and halFILE 4.0 followed by discussions on troubleshooting and ways hal Systems can further facilitate daily duties and improve response time.
 

West Des Moines, IA

On Monday, May 7^th, I was an exhibitor at the Iowa Land Title Association’s annual convention in West Des Moines.  The welcome was warm and the weather was perfect (and gas was only $3.39 per gallon!). 

halFILE is used to maintain title plants in 17 Iowa counties.  Many clients attended the conference. It was great opportunity to check in and catch up.  Everyone is staying busy and eager to see version 4.0.

The agenda was packed with interesting speakers.  The Association generously allotted each Exhibitor with 15 minutes in front of the group on Monday afternoon.  I used the time to provide an overview of hal Systems’ software and services.

Congratulations to John Eisenman!  John was named Title Person of the Year at the banquet Monday night for his numerous contributions to ILTA and his community.  John, along with his partner Mark Mallicoat, own Abstract and Title Guaranty with offices in Clinton and Maquoketa.  They have been valued clients for over 12 years.

I’m headed to Rapid City in June for the South Dakota Land Title conference.  Come see me!

Happy Birthday, hal!!

Yes today, April 12th, is hal System's 38th birthday. Our longevity is rare and it's because of great employees, great products, and wonderful customers. Thank you everyone!!

Update on halFILE 4.0

Hopefully by now everyone knows the release of halFILE 4.0 is on the horizon. We are very excited about the release and appear to be on schedule for release in June 2012. We continue to work closely with our Beta Testers to resolve as many issues as possible before the final release.

The initial Beta release did not include support for Kofax (the optional free viewer) viewing or scanning. We have released and are currently testing the Kofax viewer so that those of you that wish to continue to use the Kofax viewer will be able to. We are currently in the process of converting the Kofax scan module so that will be available as well.

The huge number of rows that the new system can return when searching continues to be one of the favorite things reported by end users. From an administrative perspective it’s going to be great to have a single Crystal Reports version and installation so no more hunting down that Crystal cd for us.

So you might be wondering what you can do to prepare for the release of halFILE 4.0. We are currently in the process of updating our website and soon there will be a number of workstation pre-requisites available athttp://update.halfile.com. These include .NET 4.0 and the Crystal workstation components. .NET 4.0 can take quite some time to install so we are hoping to make the pre-requisites available to you so you can prepare your workstations for the new version. We hope to include a program that will run on any workstation currently running halFILE 3.0 and will report what items you may still need to install. Hopefully the web-site will be simple and easy to use.

Reminder – your halFILE 4.0 upgrade will be available to you at no charge as long as you are a customer currently on maintenance. We are excited about this release and will keep you posted as the release date approaches!!!

HUG prospects for 2012

We are now formulating our halFILE Users Group schedule for 2012. We hope to have a California event, training classes in Dallas and, with positive response from you HUGites out there, a full conference in the Fall. We are also exploring web-based training, still in the early stages.

But we need to hear from you to learn what kind of halFILE events you would like to participate in this year. Send a note to Karen Duncan and let her know!

Countyrecords.com saves the day!

This week a long-time halFILE user learned the advantage of putting their land records on Countyrecords.com. This is a single server site and, unfortunately, that single server crashed. They thought they had a backup but there was none to be found. So they completely lost their core business database, their Title Plant, data and images.

But that's where Countyrecords.com saved the day.

As our partner on Countyrecords.com, they were automatically uploading their Title Plant data and images once a week to our server. Essentially, Countyrecords.com became their backup. So today, hal Technical Support reinstalled halFILE and reloaded their data. Tonite, we are overnighting about 500,000 images to them. Once those are copied to their system, this company will be back in business.

Oh, but wait! I guess they really were ALREADY back in business since during their down time, we provided them with a user login to Countyrecords.com so they could search their Title Plant records.

Can't put your records up on Countyrecords.com? You can still subscribe to the halFILE Backup Service. All the same backup features as above at a reasonable fee. Don't let your business go up in smoke! Take advantage of these great off-site backup services from hal Systems Corporation.

HUG 2011 Rocks!

HUG 2011 in Austin is over but the spirit lives on! Thank you to all users who attended and shared their ideas. We also appreciate the vendors who helped make the event informative and helpful. We will post photos, presentations, ideas on the HUG website and on Facebook soon.

Final HUG Preparations are being made

Down here in Austin, we are making our final HUG 2011 Conference preparations. I ate at our Thursday night restaurant last week and its a very cool place. Now we are working on setting up the servers and software that we will use for our presentations. It's challenging to get it all done in time, but we want to make HUG special for you.

It's not too late to join us! Contact Karen Duncan in our Dallas office and tell her you want to come to Austin to join in the fun.

For you other Hugites - see you soon!