Bob,

I really don't know the answer to your question. l984 was my first year of practice, and I did not look into writing title insurance policies until l990.
The issuance of title insurance policies seems to have become the preserve of the title companies. It is a very profitable enterprise. Here in Connecticut the agent's commission is set by statute. The agent gets 60% of the preminum as his commission. I have had some difficulty understanding exactly how the title companies are issuing Connecticut policies since the agents need to be attorneys. I can't seem to get a straight answer out of the insurance carrier for whom I write policies. The title companies can have the title insurers issue the policy directly here, but that cuts any commission severely with the insurer retaining the bulk if not all of any commission.

It used to be that issuing the title insurance policy was part of the service performed by a Connecticut attorney. The industry has changed to the point that now the attorney's seem to be receiving telephone calls from title companies in other states to book their services for the closing only. Generally arragements have already been made for someone else to issue the policy. So approximately half of the revenue previously paid to the real estate attorney has dissappeared elsewhere.

I have noticed some of the attorney's in the area whose practices were limited exclusively to real estate suffering a severe drop in business unless they formed their own title companies. As always, it is not good to have all your eggs in one basket. Real estate makes up only a small part of what I do. Most of my time is devoted to litigation...collections, evictions, foreclosures, divorces, DWI's, etc. There will always be a need for that.

If Naltea is interested in setting itself up as a title insurer, it needs to contact the Insurance Commissioner's office in the state in which it wants to set up an office. The biggest problem I foresee is whether that state would require up front funding to pay potential claims or creating some type of trust fund for this purpose. Possibly this could be done by a bond or insurance policy, but that is entirely up to the Insurance Commissioner.