Michelle Valenti-Lee gets a lot of pitches from CertifID competitors. They don't get far. "I'm inundated with offers for competitors and software. I just say ‘don't even try,’ like we're not even going there. I will always stand behind CertifID."

For a real estate attorney with 27 years in the industry, that's not brand loyalty. It's the product of watching CertifID evolve alongside the fraud landscape while delivering something she says is genuinely rare in this space: customer service that actually shows up.

Michelle is an attorney with Goggans, Stutzman, Hudson, Wilson & Mize LLP, in Atlanta. "Georgia is an attorney state, so in order to close a real estate transaction, you have to be a lawyer." 

She met CertifID at an ALTA conference in Los Angeles around 2018. "I don't remember the problem, but I do remember meeting the solution. It was very streamlined. I remember thinking, ‘we need it!’"

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When payoff fraud made it real

Back then, wire fraud was easier to spot. "The misspellings are kind of where it started back in the day." But that's no longer the world Michelle operates in. 

"The sophistication and the targets are really broad amongst all of the different parties to a transaction." The threat stopped being one-sided a long time ago. "It became clear our focus wasn't just on one side of the transaction, but has evolved into all of the parties and all of the money coming and going."

The moment that cemented CertifID for Michelle's firm was payoff fraud. Scammers had started infiltrating outbound payoff instructions and swapping in their own wiring details. 

"Once we started sending these high-dollar payoffs and the scammers were infiltrating and swapping out the payoff instructions, having that level of a protected payoff going out was just the moment I knew that it was just such a great opportunity."

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Security and efficiency in the same tool

What Michelle's team gained wasn't just protection. It was time back. 

Before CertifID, staff spent significant hours fielding calls on both ends of a transaction, verifying details, and walking clients through instructions. CertifID simplified the client-facing piece enough that those calls dropped. 

"The tool is basic and easy, which was number one for us; the customers can interface with the tool and not be overwhelmed with the technology. From an efficiency standpoint, we don't have to field a lot of incoming phone calls because people don't understand what it is or how to use it."

For a firm handling clients across all age ranges and comfort levels with technology, the ease of use matters as much as the security layer behind it.

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Built by people who speak title

What keeps Michelle loyal after all these years is something harder to replicate than a feature set. CertifID was built by people who came up in the title industry, and that foundation shows in how the product actually works.

"Having a company that is both title-based, the owners are title-based and technology-based, and they've matched the two together, it's not a struggle to explain: the language, the lingo, what we need and what we're looking for. It's just inherent in the product."

She also points to the customer service as a genuine differentiator, calling it "an anomaly in our sphere of real estate closing software." When something comes up, the team is there. When a situation requires escalation, the right contacts are already in place. That reliability, built over years of partnership, is what makes Michelle's answer to competitors so easy.

Her advice to any peer still on the fence: "I would say do it." And her summary of what makes CertifID different: "I just think they've got something special going on, and they really have their finger on the pulse, not only is it the security, but it's the efficiency too. To me, I would say a no-brainer."