National title insurance underwriter WFG innovates a win-win for agent relations
A few years ago, a national title insurance underwriter came up with a way for its title agents to access essential services on a discounted, pay-as-needed basis.
And, like many seemingly obvious leaps forward, it came about by accident.
In 2014, Patrick Stone, Executive Chairman and Founder of Portland-based Williston Financial Group LLC, was doing a little general research on the mechanics behind the insurance industry.
"As a sort of intellectual exercise, I was comparing the title insurance business with other insurance industries," Stone recently told a reporter. "And it became apparent that underwriters in most other insurance industries provide a lot of the non-client-touching functions, while the majority of title insurance agents do those functions themselves."
He thought it was likely due to how real estate had evolved, with data sources and regulations varying widely from state to state. He spoke to President and CEO Steve Ozonian and other members of WFG National Title Insurance Company's leadership team about a way to provide those services to their agents that could benefit both agent and underwriter.
As it happens, WFG was a good place to test the concept.
The company had been founded in 2010 as a national title insurance underwriter with an underpinning of complementary divisions that could expand to provide solutions throughout the real estate transaction and mortgage lifecycle. Within a few years those divisions had grown to offer many of the services title agents required: compliance assistance, information security, innovative technology solutions, and extensive marketing expertise, among others.
The building blocks for Stone's concept were ready to be assembled. It just needed an organizing principle.
Launching WFG Blocks
The program, "WFG Blocks," began with five blocks: Title & Settlement Solutions, Expense Management, HR Management, Compliance Solutions, and Information Security, with a sixth block, Marketing & Sales, added sometime later.
While someone else might have conceived this as another revenue stream, Stone's primary goal was to provide another benefit.
"We know that when our agents grow, we grow," he said. "So we don't compete with them, but instead work with them."
"Part of Pat's goal for the Blocks program was to help our agents move those fixed costs to variable costs so that they are able to save money, especially when there's a downturn in business," said WFG Vice President and Director of WFG Blocks, Jaime Johnson. "By only paying for those services that they need, when they need them, they greatly reduce overhead."
"What we're doing," Stone said, "is allowing the agent to really focus on the client, control the client, maintain that client relationship and be profitable because of it, but not carry costs of services they're not using.”
"At the same time," he continued, "by broadening the amount of volume we do, we lower our costs and can share that benefit with our agents. It is a win-win situation."
The Title & Settlement Solutions Block allows partner agents to focus on customer-facing demands by making available back-office production tasks, as needed, such as title production, policy typing, municipal liens, special assessments and utilities searches, curative and post-closing payoff tracking and the like.
"We are able to share these things because we do all of them in our direct operations," Johnson said.
According to Stone, WFG does between 35,000 to 50,000 title searches each month, with about a third of those searches coming from its agents.
The Expense Management Block gives agents direct access to negotiated discounts of 10 to 50 percent on shredding services, office equipment and supplies, refreshment services, and even car rentals, gifts and flower delivery, among others.
The HR Management Block helps title agents with recruiting, hiring and training of staff through two industry-specific staffing firms. It also provides discounts on HR services for payroll and payroll accounting functions. In addition, within the HR Management Block is a program that helps agents obtain cost-effective healthcare coverage plans, with catastrophic medical plans available for even broader protection.
The Compliance Solutions Block helps make an agent's compliance program more robust, not only to lower internal risk, but to prepare agents for audits and position them to meet all lender compliance requirements. Among the offerings are reconciliation services, assistance with regulatory audits, lender vetting questionnaires, and more.
The Marketing & Sales Block offers resources to help boost visibility, whether an agent is getting started and wants to establish his or her brand identity and messaging, or is further along in the process and looking for a competitive edge. Services are there to help them prepare marketing pieces to promote their product without having to hire staff or outsource it to unknown vendors.
Currently, the most high profile of the six Blocks is Information Security (Info-Sec). This program provides direct access to WESTprotectSM, led by Bruce Phillips, SVP & Chief Information Security Officer at WEST, a Williston Financial Group company.
"The Info-Sec Block allows access to our 411 Cybersecurity Helpdesk," Phillips explained. "And through that an employee can reach out to us with a specific concern about a suspicious email or other potential attempt at mail fraud or ransomware. It gives them the ability to talk to an expert in the field, and be able to get advice on what the problem is and what to do – or determine there is no problem."
According to Phillips, through the Information Security Block, independent agents are in touch with "the only cybersecurity helpdesk that exists for small-to-medium businesses."
Stone said that there are "a couple other things that we may be able to do with the WFG Blocks program, and we'll roll them out when we feel that they are mutually beneficial to us and our agents."
For more information on WFG’s Agent Blocks program, download our new whitepaper at https://wfgagent.com/blocks-2021-whitepaper, email [email protected], or visit wfgagent.com.
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About Williston Financial Group
Williston Financial Group (Portland, Oregon) is the parent company of WFG National Title Insurance Company, WFG Lender Services, WFG Default Services, Valutrust Solutions, LLC, WEST, and other title, settlement and technology solutions providers. It is one of the fastest growing national title insurance and settlement services providers in the mortgage and real estate services industry.