Treasury endorses key recommendations to enhance e-closing & recording. Here are 3 excerpts.

E-closing, recording and fully ‘digital mortgages are becoming a reality. In an effort to identify improvements in the regulatory landscape that will support financial technology & foster innovation, the U.S. Department of Treasury, in its July 31 report to the President: “A Financial System That Creates Economic Opportunities: Nonbank Financials, Fintech, and Innovation” has offered three key recommendations to enhance electronic closings & recording processes:

• Every state in the U.S. must pursue legislation to authorize electronic & remote online notarization and recommends that states align laws that will standardize the notarization process.
• Legislation to provide a minimum uniform national standard for electronic & remote online notarizations should be considered to provide more legal certainty across the nation.
• Every county office or recording authority must implement the essential technological updates that recognize & accepts e-records for pursuing digitization of property documents.

                                                                                                                                      – Source: ALTA

The UETA – (Uniform Electronic Transactions Act) and ESIGN – (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act) e-commerce laws establish the validity of electronic signatures on consumer’s credit transaction. More precision will be required to ensure compliance with state notary laws for using e-notarization. So far, around 39 states have legalized electronic notarization whereas, around 33 states and U.S. territories have sanctioned URPERA Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act(a model framework that authorizes county clerks and recorders to accept electronic recording) but at the county level the adoption of electronic recording stays behind.

Through May 2018, just over half of the 3,600 recording jurisdictions in the U.S. offer electronic recording.

However, as more and more transactions are electronically handled, there must be a way that ensures all documents are validated and executed in a recordable format. There is a need for reliable land records system free of any contamination of illegally executed, recorded or validated documents.?

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