During the 19th annual National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) in St. Louis, June 6-8, Ruth Dillingham, owner, Dillingham Consulting LLC, and a representative of the MISMO Title and Closing Community of Practice, will share information about new initiatives MISMO is engaged in that will make a difference in the working relationship between and among mortgage and title professionals.
“MISMO is now simultaneously releasing for comment three big initiatives that will help bridge the gap between lenders and their software and settlement agents, title agents, vendors and their software so there is better, cleaner, clearer communication; less room for error and higher customer satisfaction,” Dillingham said. “That’s the goal.”
Among those initiatives is uniform closing instructions, which MISMO has worked on for several years. The goal of the initiative, similar to Fannie Mae’s uniform mortgage, is to have a specific place for various items so they can be quickly placed in the document and found by others.
“On any Fannie Mae mortgage, if you want to know the requirements for maintenance of the property, it is always in Paragraph 7, whether the property is in Massachusetts, California or Texas,” Dillingham said. “Same thing with closing instructions. If you want to know whether or not the lender in this transaction is asking you to send the post-closing document back to a P.O. Box, you always look in the specific transaction closing instructions in [the paragraph] where it says post-closing documents shall be sent to [blank space].”
This information has all been MISMO identified so software designers licensed to use MISMO intelligence and copyrighted materials can build the information into their systems.
MISMO also is working on a uniform naming initiative so various industry members are using the same terminology for things like different taxes.
Dillingham said she hopes her presentation reassures attendees that these efforts will not change the work they do, but make the process smoother.
“[This is] not going to change your control over the numbers; it’s not going to change anything from your end in terms of doing what you do for a living,” she said. “It’s just, you may have to get used to the fact that they are now clarifying that what your state defines as an ‘excise tax’ is actually required to be named ‘transfer tax’ on the forms by the TRID rule. Or that there are different definitions for a ‘flood determination fee’ and a ‘flood certification fee’. There may be some minor translation issues, but my ‘subtle message’ that I want people to walk away with is: [This is] intended to make things work better and, most importantly that if done correctly and embraced by everybody, it means you are not redrawing the documents six times.”
For more information on the 2023 NS3, including the agenda and a list of speakers for all three days, click here. You can register for NS3 online here, or get information on how to register via mail, fax or phone.