Congratulations, You’re a TRID Survivor!

Based on what I am hearing about your TRID closing experiences, you all qualify for the championship round of “Survivor.” The questions and comments that we are getting at the Help Desk and through the CFPB Hotline indicate that there is precious little consistency in lender practices. Kudos to you and your staff for hanging in there and getting the deal closed despite the confusion.

Keep in mind that this is a temporary situation and the more training, reading, reviewing and listening that you can do over the next several months, the sooner you will feel comfortable with the new process. Here are some things to consider:

• Keep training. Create time to go to our Information Center and review the CFPB FAQs and the DoubleTime® FAQs and explore the other resources there. Reviewing some of my past emails may be helpful. Go to the Education area of the Information Center and view one or two webinars. In particular, you might want to review the webinar on how to show title premiums on the Closing Disclosure.
• Send stories to us. We want to hear about your experiences under the new rules: how lenders are handling implementation, consumer reaction, and problems you are encountering. Later this week, I am sending out a request for you to complete a survey about your TRID experiences. I would really appreciate it if you could take the time to respond to the questions so that we can better support you in the future.

If you have called the Help Desk recently, you heard my message about use of the Help Desk. The volume of calls has recently increased and we realized too many Members were using the Help Desk Reps to train them on the new TRID rules, primarily the Closing Disclosure. They will no longer do this and will re-direct those Members who have done little or no training to other resources. The Help Desk is there to assist Members who have specific questions about an aspect of the Closing Disclosure or TRID and have some level of familiarity with the Closing Disclosure. So if your first TRID closing is soon, I encourage you to begin using the resources that are readily available to you so that you will be in a good position to handle the closing and reach out to the Help Desk if needed.

The American Land Title Association (ALTA) is still fully engaged in helping the industry get through the implementation of TRID. I participate in several regular phone conferences that address implementation issues. One area of concern is settlement agent liability based on new language in lender closing instructions (many lenders have revised their loan closing instructions in light of TRID). ALTA recently sent a letter to CFPB to raise this issue and to create an opportunity to discuss it further. Here is a link to the letter if you are interested.

Otherwise, please hang in there and keep doing a great job as usual!

Thank you for your support of The Fund.

Best Regards,

Melissa Jay Murphy
Senior Vice President and
General Counsel