Highlighting some of CertifID’s title company partnerships as we work together to put a stop to and prevent wire transfer fraud.
Highlighting some of CertifID’s title company partnerships as we work together to put a stop to and prevent wire transfer fraud.
Katie Stewart
5 minutes
Fraud Prevention
Oct 5, 2023
Since 2017, CertifID has been helping title agents, lenders, real estate professionals, and buyers and sellers protect their digital identities, secure key elements of the wire transfer process, and assist with fraud recovery services.
In that time, CertifID has helped countless customers feel the peace of mind that comes with a more secure wire transfer process and has provided successful funds recoveries to dozens and dozens of transactions.
In fact, just last year, CertifID’s team led more than 120 successful funds recovery efforts resulting in the return of more than $46 million to consumers and title companies that were victims of wire fraud, an 86 percent success rate.
But sometimes, it is our customers that are best able to speak to the power that CertifID’s platform and professionals deliver every day, which is why we wanted to take a moment to highlight several of our title company partnerships as we fight together to put a stop to and prevent wire transfer fraud.
Here are just a few of our most recent stories we wanted to share:
The Abstract & Title Guaranty Company is a locally owned and operated team of real estate professionals that has proudly served clients for more than 100 years. During that time, Abstract & Title Company has seen nearly every type of fraud attempt, from phone calls from fraudsters pretending to be clients and messages from hacked email accounts to the receipt of countless altered faxed payoff statements.
But fighting back against fraud attempts was becoming a more frequent and time-intensive process, leaving the risk too high to continue to take the same steps.
That’s why Abstract & Title decided to turn to the CertifID platform.
As Beth Ford, sales executive at Abstract & Title describes the implementation, “It was seamless—so user friendly, so quick,” freeing up agent time and reducing the firm’s risk. The company instantly felt appreciation from clients who value enhanced security.
After more than 100 years in the real estate business in the Pacific Northwest, the Alliance Title and Escrow team began to notice a dramatic increase in wire fraud activity in the region.
Finally, after seeing several other companies fall victim and experiencing some near misses themselves, Robin Aberasturi, SVP of escrow services and compliance at Alliance Title, took action to prevent wire transfer fraud.
The Alliance team chose CertifID because of the simplicity of the platform and how the end-to-end encryption surrounding the wire transfer data collection process resulted in a large reduction in legal liability.
CertifID also offered seamless integration with Alliance's other tools and workflow, such as with Qualia's ResWare, making it easy for her team to learn and use for every transaction.
Touchstone Closing & Escrow focuses on always providing its customers with a five-star experience.
That’s why, when faced with today’s dynamic cyberthreats, John Chiesa, controller at Touchstone, and his team decided that they needed wire fraud prevention technology.
Before CertifID, Touchstone used a manual, time-intensive verification process that offered some level of security but was quickly being outpaced by new threats.
Now, with CertifID, Touchstone's new process requires any wire transfer to be facilitated via CertifID, and if a client does not wish to use it, they will simply receive a check.
For Touchstone, the results have been clear: Wire transfers are going out faster and safer, and customers and their team have more peace of mind that their transactions are secure.
The threat of wire fraud isn’t going anywhere.
In fact, losses tied to real estate fraud reached more than $213 million in 2020.
Fortunately, just like these partners featured above, your real estate business doesn't have to face this threat alone. CertifID helps your team take your customer’s data security to the next level and reduce your risk of liability by using an encrypted web session from which to collect wire transfer information from each party after independently verifying each user’s identity.
Want to learn more about how CertifID’s platform and experienced team helps to lead the fight to prevent wire transfer fraud? Make sure to check out our ongoing webinar series, To Catch a Fraudster.
VP of Customer Success
Katie's background combines both IT and education. Her degree is in Management Information Systems, and she spent her first four years in the workforce as an IT business analyst. Katie took a career turn and joined Teach for America and worked in inner-city schools in Indianapolis as a math teacher and eventually an assistant principal. Today she combines her IT nerdiness and love of teaching, helping customers find success every day.