Robert, your article on the necessity of e&o insurance vis a vis the escalating cost was excellent. You may wish to consider a follow up article on the reason for the increased cost. There is a huge investigation about to begin here in the tri-state area of the Northeast concerning "steering." This is a practice employed by unscrupulous insurance agents who steer their insureds to more expensive insurance carriers to get a higher commission. We generally get around problems like this by requesting premium quotations from several different insurance agencies for renewals, and we let them know that they are in direct competition with each other. This seems to encourage them to come forward with more affordable rates.

The high cost of e&o insurance is another factor fostering the the advent of the low end cheap title search performed by the inexperience title abstractors. These searchers can reduce their expenses by not carrying the insurance, and therefore undercut the price charged by the experienced searcher. For these inexperienced searchers the U S Bankruptcy Court becomes their friend and a viable alternative to carrying e&o insurance.

With respect to your article on the general lack of knowledge held by clients, further inquiry
could be made into the extent to which clients are factoring the incompetence of their employees and the use of inexperienced searchers into the underwriting of their title insurance policies.





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