Fitch: Old Republic Outlook Moved to Negative

Press release here.

The Negative Outlook reflects concerns from the strain from poor operating results in ORI’s mortgage insurance and title insurance businesses combined with increased concerns over the growth in ORI’s consumer credit indemnity (CCI) program.

Uniform Closing Instruction Proposal

ALTA, along with MBA and the AEA have proposed a set of uniform loan closing instructions.  While I haven’t had a chance to review in detail, any attempt to standardize the Byzantine world of closing instructions will reduce confusion and errors.  This should benefit title agents, lenders and consumers.  It looks long and painful but they are only working on content, not the final layout. 

New York AG sues First American for Appraisal Conspiracy

Press Release here.

 In a scheme detailed in numerous e-mails, eAppraiseIT (“EA”), a subsidiary of First American Corporation (NYSE: FAF), caved to pressure from Washington Mutual (“WaMu”) (NYSE: WM) to use a list of preferred “Proven Appraisers” who provided inflated appraisals on homes.  The e-mails also show that executives at EA knew their behavior was illegal, but intentionally broke the law to secure future business with WaMu.

And you can bet it was to secure more title and mortgage processing business: