Preferred Title Turns Days of Overnighting Into Minutes with Proof
Title and escrow runs on trust, and few things test that trust like a seller who's already moved out of state before closing. Preferred Title handles a high volume of these transactions, and for years the only option was overnighting documents to the seller, hoping they could track down a local notary on their own, then overnighting everything back. Today that entire step happens online, in about the time it takes to grab a coffee.
Transactions completed in last 12 months
Average notary meeting length
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Overnighting documents to sellers who couldn't attend
Preferred Title closes a large volume of transactions involving out-of-state sellers, people who've already relocated and can't make it to the closing table in person. Before Proof, that meant printing the documents, overnighting them to the seller, and hoping they could find their own notary nearby to witness the signature. Then everything had to be overnighted back before closing could proceed.
That process carried two problems at once. Seller fraud is already a persistent risk in title and escrow, and handing signature verification off to a notary the company had never vetted did nothing to reduce it. On top of that, most sellers were working during the day, which left little time to track down a notary, sit down for the appointment, and get the documents back in the mail before a deadline.
Preferred Title also operates through several affiliate companies, and documents sent from any of them consistently appeared to come from "Preferred Title" itself. Customers receiving paperwork from a name that didn't match the office they'd been working with had reason to wonder whether it was legitimate, an unhelpful side effect in an industry where fraud concerns already run high.
A verified notary and a customized sender, built into the workflow
Proof gave Preferred Title's closers a platform to upload documents, tag them, and connect sellers with a live, on-demand notary without ever leaving the office. Sellers no longer need to find their own notary or carve out time during a workday. They log in before or after their shift and complete the signing in a single sitting. As Shaughnessy noted, “the fact that Proof has its own notaries available has been a big plus and a timesaver for our closers. It's a very user-friendly platform.”
The platform's verification steps address the fraud risk directly: multiple checks confirm the signer's identity before the notarization can proceed, and documents can now display the correct affiliate company name instead of defaulting to "Preferred Title" across the board. That single change cleared up the confusion that had been raising fraud concerns among customers.
For faster transactions that only need a signature and not a full notarization, Preferred Title's closers turn to Sign, Proof’s e-signature solution, particularly useful for out-of-state sellers who need something signed quickly. A built-in view into transaction status and signing history lets closers see exactly where a document stands, whether a seller is mid-session or got locked out after failing a security check.
From days of overnighting to a 10-minute meeting
Preferred Title now handles more than 100 closings a month across its offices using Proof's on-demand notary network, with individual offices, like the one Shaughnessy runs, closing ~50 seller-side transactions a month and relying heavily on e-sign to keep them moving.
During the summer, out-of-state sellers make up a larger share of closings, making smooth online transactions more critical than ever. WIth a 98% notary meeting completion rate and notary wait times averaging 1.8 seconds, notarization is no longer a bottleneck. Now, documents that once took days to circulate by mail take less than 30 hours to complete, send to signed. “For Security Reasons, We're not printing and overnighting documents to sellers anymore,” Shaughnessy said, “Proof’s platform has given our closers the peace of mind that closing documents will be signed correctly and in a timely manner.”
Title and escrow runs on trust, and Preferred Title no longer has to sacrifice speed to protect it. Sellers who used to wait days on a notary and a round of overnight mail now finish in a single sitting, verified and branded under the right affiliate name. Preferred Title's closers spend their time closing deals instead of chasing down paperwork.
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