You kind of lost me on your question.  Ohio does not have any licencing requirements for someone doing a title search. A title agent is required to have a licence.  NALTEA   has made an effort in the past to require some type of certification of title searchers and examiners in the state, but without success to this point.  They also started keeping their commercial and doing more of it in-house for perhaps the last 20 years of so.  Back when I started, they always gave it to the agencies, normally favoring the one's that knew commercial.  I made a lot of money in the late 70's, early 80's searching, underwriting, and closing  a lot of cool commercial jobs.

In my experience over the last 40 plus years doing title work here in Central Ohio, the norm has been for the agencies to do the searches and prepare the commitments,  The big four have been promoting in-house title work and commitment prep over the last 10-15 years or so, and over the last several years several of the smaller agencies have signed up for it.

I enjoy hearing that you would never accept overseas work,, with your caveat about being licenced..  Perhaps you misread my reply.  It is some of the major underwriters  promoting overseas work as opposed to actually local title work.

 The underwriters here do not care about quality work for residential.  The only agencies that care are owned by old folks like me.   Commercial work is the primary work my company as well as a couple of other old time folk