What's next for CertifID: highlights from our vision webinar

A week after we announced we had acquired Closinglock, our CEO Tyler Adams hosted a live webinar with Closinglock founder and CEO Andy White and CloseSimple co-founder Paul Stine to talk through what happens now. Our goal, as Tyler put it, is to become "the intelligent trust layer behind every single transaction that matters." If you'd rather watch than read, the replay is here.

Why now

Three things are happening at once that are changing how this industry needs to operate.

Fraud is getting worse. "I'm not here to fear monger in any way," Tyler said, "but I can just tell you, based on what we see every single day, that we are still in the very early innings of how bad fraud is going to get." Phishing is personalized now, timed to the closing, and cheap to run at volume.

Title teams also have to run lean to grow, and most are juggling more vendors and integrations than they ever have.

And buyers and sellers expect more. Everyone has an assistant in their pocket, and that expectation walks into the closing with them.

When we polled attendees on which of the three they feel most, more than half picked all three.

What each company brings

CertifID's part is the fraud engine, the security and the insurance. When we flag a bad actor or a fraudulent bank account on one file today, every customer in our network is protected from that same actor. "Now all of a sudden, when we expand that reach to the entire CloseSimple customer base, the entire Closinglock customer base, and we start to share that data, we are starting to get the ability to truly stop fraud before it happens across a much wider network," Tyler said.

CloseSimple built the integrations and automations. "Everything's fully integrated," Paul said. "It's easy to provide a really great closing experience one-off. It's harder to do that at scale."

Closinglock built the payments. The platform has moved more than $7 billion in real estate payments, secure, compliant and insured, and homebuyers rate the experience 4.7 to 4.8 out of 5 in Closinglock's surveys.

Paul described the sales conversations of the past few years, and how this acquisition now gives customers the best of all three. "People make a decision, and they go, ‘but can I also have that thing that Closinglock does incredibly well and that thing that CertifID does incredibly well?’ Now the answer is yes."

This brings 255 people across Austin, Grand Rapids and Minneapolis, supporting more than 3,000 title companies, into one company, focused on protecting your firm from threats and inefficiencies.

What's changing, and what isn't

Put directly, nothing changes for you today. You keep the product you use and the way you log in. You keep the support team you already call. Your contract and pricing hold until renewal, and nobody is getting a new CertifID contract because of the acquisition. The brand on the door stays too, including in the collateral you share with agent partners.

"Tyler and I have been aligned since day one on this, that the integration work is for us to handle internally, behind the scenes," Andy said. "Keep using what you love. We'll take care of everything on the back end."

What is changing is behind the scenes. Our three teams are already working as one. We're connecting fraud intelligence across all three platforms, so a bad actor flagged on one is flagged on all, and verified identities carry across too. "We've already seen that realtor before, so we don't need to verify them again," Andy said. 

Fraud Recovery Services is also now available to customers on all three platforms. And each product keeps its own roadmap. "Don't assume that just because this acquisition happened that all of a sudden there's going to be no innovation on the Closinglock platform," Tyler said. "That is not the case."

Where this is headed

We’re building one platform that connects everyone in the closing, with a dedicated assistant for each of them.

CloseSimple was first to market with a step-by-step portal for consumers, Closinglock added payments, and we add identity verification from the first step. The result is a buyer who is verified once and trusted throughout, knows what to do this week, and can send earnest money or cash to close from the couch.

Title teams get automation from order entry through disbursement, confirmation that everyone they're talking to is who they say they are, and manual work like ordering and verifying payoffs taken off their plate.

Real estate agents and lenders stay connected to the file without the phone calls. "It's a blend," Paul said. "It's making sure those easy questions get answered, but that the personal relationship is still there."

And all of it will live inside the systems you already use, through integrations with whatever TPS and underwriter you run.

Now, next and what comes after

CloseSimple joined us about 110 days ago, and the first joint features are already in beta. Payoff ordering is in beta for CloseSimple customers now, with our verification coming into CloseSimple behind it. Closinglock recently shipped its own payoff ordering, and we're folding the best of both into one offering.

Further out, we’re building three things right now.

Escrow management. All three platforms can receive buyer payments today. Next is sending funds out securely from the same place, with full visibility into where the money went. More on this in Q4 and Q1.

Workflow intelligence. When we asked attendees what they were most excited about, fewer manual steps on every file came first at 46%. "We want to get to a place where you are literally dragging and dropping or emailing us a contract, and from there all of your workflows are getting automated," Tyler said.

An AI assistant for consumers and for closing teams. 

And we know that not all AI assistants are made equal. Andy put it best, "We're not talking about the dumb thing that can't answer any questions for you and is just obnoxious and a gatekeeper for talking to a human.” 

What we’re building, as he described, are “AI tools that are going to make you better and more efficient at your job."

Come see it for yourself

All three of our teams will be at ALTA ONE in one shared space, booths 46, 48 and 49. Tyler, Andy and Paul are doing a panel together during the conference.

If you're a customer on any of our three platforms, start with your CSM. Nothing about your support team has changed, and they can show you what's live today and what's coming to your system.

If you're not a customer yet, request a demo. Based on what you need, we can point you to the platform that fits best today and bring you the best of the other two as the products come together.

‍Watch the full replay or read more at certifid.com/close-better.

"We have chosen to come together, these three businesses, because we believe in a way bigger vision than any one of us felt like we were going to be able to accomplish alone," Tyler said. 

Now that CertifID, Closinglock and CloseSimple are one team, we're working together to help you close better.

From the Q&A

More than 100 questions came in. These came up most.

Will everything merge into one platform? Yes, eventually. Our goal is one product with the best of all three, and we hope every customer feels like they're logging into the same platform within about a year. No rip-and-replace on your side.

Is there a timeline? Not a dated one yet. We're a week into bringing Closinglock on and will share a roadmap with every customer.

We use two of the three products. What should we do? Talk to your CSM and let us know how you’re using the products today. We’ll work with you on the right path based on how you use them.