Title Insurance Carriers

Title Insurance Carriers

Brief Excerpt from Industry Overview Chapter:

Companies in this industry offer insurance policies to protect homeowners and other owners of real estate, as well as real estate creditors. Major companies include Fidelity National Financial, First American Title Insurance, and Old Republic Title.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Home sales and mortgage refinancing are the primary drivers of demand for the title insurance industry. The profitability of individual companies depends on efficient operations because of the large volume of transactions. Large companies benefit from economies of scale in access to large accumulated databases of property records. Small companies can mainly compete by specializing in nonstandard titles or in geographical regions that the large companies don't cover. The US industry is highly concentrated: the 20 largest companies account for about 95% of revenue.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

A large part of the industry revenue comes from underwriting services (about 80% of the industry's revenue), followed by legal and patent document filing and search services (about 10%). Other services include trading securities and commodity contracts. The two types of title insurance policies, for owners and lenders, may be issued for residential or commercial properties, according to the American Land Title Association. While many companies target individual home buyers, some companies specialize in commercial properties. Both property sales and mortgage refinancing trigger the need for a title search and an insurance policy.