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64 Amid this environment, the title industry constantly shifted to meet new service and product demands. e successful enterprises were quick to adapt using all their assets and prior experience to respond to and deliver on the opportunities. Given the uncontrollable nature of these macro events, the importance of having a strategy focused on flexibility and rapid re-deployment may seem obvious, but, all too often, firms fail to consider how they are positioned in their markets and the real risks to their business models. Stepping back from daily operations and assessing a company's ability to rapidly shift skill sets and assets requires a concerted effort. Frequently, developing a plan to respond to macro changes long before a crisis, business need, or opportunity arises are delayed, causing firms to be caught off guard. While it is appropriate to focus on present demand, a management team must also seek opportunities to gain knowledge that can create sustainable enterprise value. In the rush to address immediate needs, a company can look up from the table one day and find the marketplace and its franchise value has shifted. By then, it may be too late to pivot in a new direction. From our perspective, as a real estate title data and solutions provider that has weathered the recent crisis, there are several important lessons we learned that are applicable to any enterprise in this industry space. HISTORY AS TEACHER Looking back over the last 15 years, one can gain a perspective of how quickly lending industry cycles can change. In the early 2000s, home equity lending was in vogue as lenders responded to consumer demands for leveraging the rapidly growing equity in their homes. In the title product space, providing streamlined owner and encumbrance or vesting reports to lenders offering next-day loan approvals was driving several million transactions annually as lenders competed for the consumer's business. Investing in aggregated title data and automated report production with inline quality control were also critical aspects top providers mastered. At about the same time, the rise of subprime mortgages took on a new pace as Wall Street embraced higher yield mortgage debt instruments and drove investor demand for new originations. e frenzy that ensued for lenders to drive high volumes created an industry unto itself that demanded specialized title services to address multiple liens, track distressed tax payments, and provide curative assistance to this segment of the marketplace. Expertise in reviewing and examining title became valued assets for the industry. From 2004 to 2007, serial refinancing of prime mortgages became a new consumer trend tracking declining interest rates. Delivering high volumes of title services that provided current owner reports for these repeated refinance transactions necessitated investments in capacity planning and automation to streamline abstract practices, review, and control quality across large geographies. e housing collapse in 2008 initiated a whole new demand for title data in response to loss mitigation, pre-foreclosure, and REO asset management. e focus on far more detailed title search work to effectively support legal recourses on defaulting loans required the title industry to focus on delivering 30- to 60-year title abstracts and the aggregation of unrecorded lien data from new points—homeowner associations, municipal fines, etc. Presently, we find the industry coming into an increasing rate environment with significantly diminished demand for streamlined refinance transactions. e symptoms include a slow-down in default and foreclosure activity, continuing loss mitigation efforts, and a renewed expectation for purchase demand to grow alongside overall economic recovery. e enterprises that survived and prospered through the last decade were those with a nimble approach to the environment and those focused on building a stronger foundation throughout each period. BUILDING A NIMBLE ORGANIZATION One approach to ensure readiness for a hyper-changing marketplace is to embrace a culture of documented experiences and constant refinement while investing in a business model that emphasizes diverse skills, knowledge, and products, all of which have been tested to face the cyclical market challenges. Today, technology plays a significant role in capturing and retaining the best practices learned at each market interval. Unlike the old days of sticky note-covered cubicles and companies that relied on the wisdom of a few sage veterans from past market cycles, the current industry relies on technology platforms that offer vast opportunities for retaining expert workflows, optimal procedures, and detailed production guidance across a national footprint— all of which would have simply been lost wisdom in past generations. Investing in these critical systems enables streamlined data assets from home equity to become part of the foundational refinance product needs and best practices from subprime title research to contribute to better sourcing and documentation for loss mitigation and default products. Also, by codifying best practices into a single distributed platform, production staff can be deployed into local markets with as much efficiency as ever and a new level of market-specific expertise. rough the shifting market cycles, one very significant challenge is to retain the talented people who possess the skills and knowledge to The enterprises that survived and prospered through the last decade were those with a nimble approach to the environment and those focused on building a stronger foundation throughout each period.

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