When discussions turn to innovative technology, a few well-known inventions often come to mind – hybrid cars, perhaps, or Google and the iPhone.
Certainly, those represented big leaps forward in their respective industries. But not all important technology comes in flashy packaging. Consider Equity National Title & Closing Services Inc. in East Providence.
Equity National is the sort of unglamorous business that plays a vital role in keeping the wheels of commerce turning. The privately held company offers mortgage settlement services, primarily to banks and other lenders. It dots the i’s and crosses the t’s on a mortgage application, double-checking everything from the titleholder to the borrower’s banking history, and uses that information to create documentation for the closing on a house.
Historically, the title-agent business has been dominated by local agents using old-fashioned technology that is mostly geared toward the needs of the agent rather than the lender, according to Jim O’Donnell, Equity National’s longtime president. But his company had a different idea.
“We wanted a technology that we could manage,” he said. “The technology that most agents typically have used, and still do use, causes them to run their business around the technology. Our view was, we want technology to enable our business and power our business, but not dictate to us how to run the business.”
Equity National’s new thinking has paid off. The firm has expanded from New England into 48 states over the past four years, and is on track to continue growing. “You don’t have to be revolutionary,” said O’Donnell, who joined Equity National right out of law school in 1991. “Sometimes practical and commonsensical is revolutionary to a certain industry, one that’s kind of stuck in the ’60s and ’70s,” as the title-agent business has been.
Equity National was founded in 1989 by Dennis Hardiman, who remains the company’s owner. For most of its two-decade history, Equity National – formerly known as Equity Title – was a traditional title agency, providing basic settlement services in standard ways.
What changed, O’Donnell said, was Equity National’s embrace of technology. In 1997, the company bought the source code for a then-cutting-edge settlement services software product. Since then, its own developers have radically modified the original code into a proprietary program they call NPS.
“It has been a significant advantage for us, and I’d say that we’re a bit forward-thinking,” O’Donnell said. It also has helped Equity National not only weather the historic downturn in the nation’s housing market, but thrive in spite of it. “We haven’t had a decline – actually we’ve had the opposite,” he said.
Not that Equity National can take all the credit for the uptick. A significant number of its competitors have gone out of business, including LandAmerica, the nation’s third-largest title insurer, which filed for bankruptcy last fall. The ranks of mortgage lenders have thinned, as well, and those that remain are asking more of firms like Equity National.
“There’s a lot more deliberation, a lot more serious foresight going into who lenders are working with,” O’Donnell said. “And fortunately, we’re a company that’s meeting that standard.”
In fact, Equity National is beefing up its offerings. This spring, the company acquired Jacksonville, Fla.-based Secure Collateral, a provider of appraisals and other property valuation products, which O’Donnell said will help enhance Equity’s relationships with its lender clients.
Perhaps the best sign of the company’s optimism can be found, fittingly, in its real estate. Its new 17,000-square-foot office in East Providence houses 130 employees, up from 80 less than a year ago, and has room for 120 more, while the Jacksonville office it acquired as part of the Secure Collateral purchase has 25 workers and can fit another 55.
“The future looks bright, from both the business perspective and some really cool, innovative tools we’re at least kicking ideas around with,” Lanphere said. •
