Title insurance is boring, but Allied Title & Escrow is here to decode the jargon and make it (somewhat) more interesting. This biweekly column will explore the mundane (but very necessary!) world of title insurance while sharing interesting stories of two friends’ entrepreneurial careers.
At Allied Title & Escrow we’ve been very fortunate to have grown very quickly and have not had a lack of business coming in since our inception. Hopefully the growth is because we provide great service for our customers, always work to improve our offering and as a result we continue to receive referrals.
Our biggest issue to date has been finding great employees and when you find them you need to find a way to keep them. An employee who is great with customers is the best marketing tactic you can have as a company.
We have one processor who has brought on 5 new clients because she has done an excellent job for the first client. Ask any sales person in the title business and they will tell you that finding five new clients could take years, not just months.
Great employees make the office experience more enjoyable for everyone else and in the end make you want to come to work. A wise man once told me, you better like who you live with and who you work with.
It’s a simplistic but great point.
One thing we have done to try to keep our employees happy is to set up bi-weekly meetings to provide continuous communication on what is working and how we can get better.
Although these meetings can be effective, we also must let our employees know they can come to us individually and share details they don’t want to share in a group. If we aren’t open to hear their thoughts and concerns, they won’t share tactics on ways to improve and eventually leave the company.
If one thing is certain, we don’t believe there will ever be a time where we can figure out how to make employees happy or solve the entire office dynamic. It’s a constant work in in progress.
Employees change, people change, times changes and in the end we believe it’s about constant communication and understanding that we can always get better. Many of these concepts are the same approach we take with running our business and taking care of our customers.
To learn more about what is important to us as a company, click here.
Title Tip of the Week
Many people ask us the different between homeowners insurance and title insurance. Here are some quick differences between the two:
Homeowners insurance is paid monthly or annually and covers losses which occur to one’s home (eg, floods, fires, broken appliances, etc).
What the insurance covers is dependent on the policy details of the coverage. Homeowners insurance typically requires a deductible and must be paid for as long as you want coverage.
On the other hand title insurance is paid one time at closing and covers title issues for the homeowner and the homeowner’s heirs for as long as they live there. There is no deductible if a claim ever occurs.
Title issue examples include boundary disputes with neighbors or disputes related to who specifically owns the property (eg., a previous owner of the home was never on the deed but should have been and now claims ownership to your property).
Have questions related to title insurance? Email Latane and Matt at [email protected]. Want to use Allied Title & Escrow when you buy a home? Tell your agent when you buy a house to write in Allied Title & Escrow as your settlement company!