On January 21st we held the first meeting of what we are hoping develops into our Georgia Users Group for Premier eTitleLien™. (Our primary Users Group will have its fifth meeting on February 10th in Columbia, SC.) The Users Group President, Dara Biswell of Heritage Trust FCU, and Vice-President, Lisa Vandys of Carolina Foothills FCU, both attended along with several of our Georgia customers.
Prior to the Users Group, we held an information session for prospective customers about our ELT services with an emphasis on how the program works in Georgia. We reviewed a lot of the basics (cost savings, fraud reduction, fewer missed titles) and gave a brief demo of Premier eTitleLien™. We noted our experience working with lenders in the newly mandatory states of Pennsylvania and Louisiana and highlighted the ease of use of working with state ELT programs. Our attempt to demo the Georgia Title Check service didn't work. Live demonstrations are such wonderful things. :(
As part of this information session, and since we had several of our customers there, we offered a chance for them to share how they are using ELT and for anyone else to ask any questions. I was pleasantly surprised (as usually happens) by their praise. Two of our Georgia customers (Citizens Trust Bank and Augusta VAH FCU) also added their reflections about the program. I wish we had recorded it.
Lisa opened the Users Group meeting and Dara spoke about the mission, goals, and structure of the group. Ann Gunning (CIO here at Decision Dynamics, Inc.) gave an update on each state's ELT program, noting progress and goals for each of the states. I briefly (since I had given a full demo earlier) highlighted some changes users can expect in our next release. We also demonstrated the new GA Title Check (working this time!) confirming (with current Georgia titles) both an inactive lien and a lien correctly placed.
We then opened a discussion of support issues, problems, and suggestions.
- A suggestion came up that Premier eTitleLien™ could do a better job of highlighting which state issued the electronic title that was just received.
- I asked if anyone had any trouble with providing proof of lien to other companies. The only problems really seem to come from local entities, like local insurance agents, especially those not in ELT states.
- A desire for an ELT program in Alabama and North Carolina was mentioned.
- A question came up about Texas seeking approval to allow electronic signatures for title applications. We explained what we knew about the Federal regulation and Virginia's experience doing the same thing.
- We also briefly discussed the problem of customers claiming to have a duplicate title or of attempting to forge release documents, and the recent success in those areas due to the states' (SC and GA in this case) policies regarding ELT.
- We also mentioned that the new requirement that each state check incoming out-of-state titles against the NMVTIS database was slowing down the lien recordation process for those titles.
We'd love to have your feedback on any changes you'd like to see with ELT in your state or the Premier eTitleLien™ program.
Image: Oriental Poppies by Georgia O'Keefe
