Cheat Code #1: ALTA Compliance
The American Land Title Association (ALTA) chartered its Best Practices on January 2, 2013. This document was written to offer guidance to its membership on best practices to protect consumers, promote quality service, provide ongoing employee training, and meet legal and market requirements.
Best Practice No. 2 states: Adopt and maintain appropriate written procedures and controls for Escrow Trust Accounts allowing for electronic verification of reconciliation.
The Rynoh Advantage:
RynohLive allows for electronic verification of reconciliation – on a daily basis.
When you combine daily account reconciliation with the monthly Reconciliation Analysis Report, you can demonstrate with absolute transparency that you are managing your escrow with proper controls – and nothing makes underwriters and lenders happier than an agent with nothing to hide.
Cheat Code #2: Fraud Protection
We often hear from agents that they use a monthly reconciliation service to reconcile their accounts.
The Rynoh Advantage:
Unfortunately, with monthly reconciliation services you are not receiving the best practices and therefore unaware of the danger signals leading up to embezzlement, employee theft, bank errors, and employee errors. RynohLive offers automatic daily three-way reconciliation, with an embedded “Wizard” that identifies accounting and posting errors. In addition, timely alerts of potential issues either allow for mitigation or total elimination of the loss from fraud or error. A “Reconciliation Analysis” feature further identifies the status of transactions that may represent audit or regulatory issues.
Cheat Code #3: Real-Time Notifications
A complete understanding of what is happening with your escrow trust account is only half of the puzzle. Understanding what is not happening is the Rynoh Advantage.
The Rynoh Advantage:
RynohLive enables the settlement agent to create a list of critical disbursement alerts. Alerts that meet your pre-set criteria are identified and then delivered each day via Rynoh’s Morning Report. Alerts are very easy to create and are used to track recordings, mortgage payoffs, insurance premiums, stale dated checks, and more. Alerts may include:
- Any disbursement greater than or equal to $5,000 that has not cleared after 4 business days.
- Payee containing “Clerk” that has not cleared after 7 business days.
- Purpose containing “Flood” that has not cleared after 15 business days.
Cheat Code #4: Daily Account Reconciliation
Lenders have begun to issue new vendor agreements to their settlement agents, and stricter requirements are outlined within these documents. Are you prepared to demonstrate with complete transparency that your escrow trust accounts are in order?
The Rynoh Advantage:
RynohLive ensures that you can demonstrate to the lender you are following ALTA’s Best Practices, you’re monitoring your accounts daily and you can validate that their funds are secure. RynohReport also provides documentation with the following reports:
- Three Way Reconciliation
- Reconciliation Analysis
- Review Summary
If you are ready to optimize your accounts reconciliation process, let us give you a free demo today and show you how Rynoh can help you achieve escrow accounting operational excellence.