Free ALTA Best Practices Self-Assessment:
Would Your Agency Pass a Lender’s Review?
- 9 quick questions
- Takes about 2 minutes
- No sign-up to see your result
Your top next moves
Use the interactive ALTA Best Practices risk check below to see where your title or settlement agency actually stands.
Answer 9 quick questions, weighted toward wire-fraud prevention and escrow accounting since that’s where lenders and underwriters look first, and get your lender-readiness score in about 2 minutes: your risk level, the specific gaps to close, and a printable checklist you can hand to your team or IT provider.
No sign-up to see your result.
What the ALTA Best Practices Framework Actually Covers (the short version)
ALTA’s Title Insurance and Settlement Company Best Practices Framework organizes an agency’s compliance posture into seven pillars:
- Licensing:
Current, verified agency and producer licenses
- Escrow Trust Accounting:
Segregated funds, reconciled and documented
- Protecting Non-Public Personal Information:
A written information security program covering how you safeguard client data, plus an annual Rapid Response Plan review for a wire-fraud or breach incident
- Recording Procedures:
Timely, accurate recording of documentstimely, accurate recording of documents
- Policy Production and Reporting:
Title policies issued and reported correctly, with escheatment handled where required
- Insurance Coverage:
Adequate, current Errors & Omissions and fidelity/crime coverage
- Consumer Complaints:
A written process to log and resolve them.
There’s no legal mandate requiring any of this, which is exactly why many agencies have never formally self-assessed against it, until a lender or underwriter asks.
The Full ALTA Best Practices Checklist
Work through each pillar below. Anything you can’t confirm is a gap. If you can’t prove it, a lender’s compliance reviewer can’t either.
- 1. Licensing:
✓ All agency licenses current in every state you operate.
✓ Every producer’s license verified and renewal-tracked so nothing lapses unnoticed. - 2. Escrow Trust Accounting:
✓ Client escrow/trust funds held in an account completely separate from operating funds, with zero commingling, ever.
✓ A three-way reconciliation (bank balance, book balance, outstanding client ledgers) performed at least monthly, dated and signed.
✓ Written procedures for how escrow funds are received, held, and disbursed. - 3. Protecting Non-Public Personal Information:
✓ A written information security program (WISP) describing how NPI is protected, current within the last 12 months.
✓ A wire-fraud verification protocol: every outgoing wire confirmed by phone at a number already on file, never a number from the payoff email.
✓ A Rapid Response Plan for a wire-fraud incident or data breach, formally reviewed every 12 months.
✓ Access controls, encryption, and secure disposal of records containing NPI. - 4. Settlement Processes:
✓ Documents recorded promptly and accurately after closing, within two business days of settlement or of receiving what you need to record, whichever is later.
✓ A process to catch and correct recording errors before they become title defects.
✓ Title insurance premiums and rate-regulated fees calculated from current filed rates, including any reissue or discount rate the file qualifies for.
✓ Overcharged detected and refunded rather than waiting for a client or an auditor to find them. - 5. Title Policy Production and Reporting:
✓ Title policies issued and reported to the underwriter within required timeframes.
✓ Escheatment of unclaimed funds handled per state requirements where applicable. - 6. Insurance Coverage:
✓ Errors & Omissions (E&O) coverage current and adequate for your policy volume.
✓ Fidelity/crime coverage current and reviewed against your average escrow size in the last year. - 7. Consumer Complaints:
✓ A written procedure for logging, tracking, and resolving consumer complaints.
✓ A named person responsible for complaint resolution.
How to read your gaps?
- 0 – 2 Gaps (None in Wire or Escrow Verification)
Strong Shape.
- 3 – 6 Gaps (Or one Critical Gap)
Real, findable gaps that would draw findings in a lender or underwriter review.
- 7+ Gaps or 2+ Critical Gaps
Means you’d likely fail that review today and may be carrying live wire-fraud exposure right now.
ALTA Best Practices FAQ
Licensing, escrow trust accounting, protecting non-public personal information (including a WISP and an annually reviewed Rapid Response Plan), settlement processes, title policy production and reporting, insurance coverage (E&O and fidelity/crime), and consumer complaints. The checklist above maps to each.
No. There’s no legal mandate. The pressure to comply comes from lenders and underwriters, who increasingly require proof of compliance to keep referring business to an agency. Because there’s no legal requirement forcing the issue, many agencies have never formally self-assessed, which is exactly what this tool is for.
At least annually, and any time your systems, vendors, or staff change materially. The Rapid Response Plan specifically calls for an annual review, and it’s one of the easiest requirements to let quietly lapse without a hard deadline forcing it.
Most commonly it’s a scheduled annual review tied to a referral relationship, a new lender relationship being established, or a reported incident such as a wire-fraud attempt. Because you can’t always predict the timing, the practical answer is to stay ready year-round rather than scrambling when the request lands.
Because it’s the title industry’s highest-value fraud vector. A single unverified wire can cost a client their entire down payment or purchase funds, and it happens through convincing, well-timed fake payoff instructions, not through some exotic technical exploit. A callback-verification protocol is the single highest-impact control against it.
Yes. The Framework scales to your size, but lenders expect all 7 pillars addressed regardless of agency size. A smaller agency simply has fewer systems, staff, and vendors to cover.
Ready to close your gaps?
If your result flagged gaps in wire verification, escrow reconciliation, or your WISP, most of that is technical and process work an IT and cybersecurity partner handles day to day. LeadingIT helps title and settlement agencies build the wire-verification protocols, encryption, access controls, and documented information security program that complies with ALTA Best Practices and that your lender partners expect. We deliver this FOR agencies, not as a certifying body.
If wire fraud specifically is your biggest concern, LeadingIT’s BEC and wire-fraud risk check goes deeper on that one pillar alone. Email yourself the full result from the tool above, book a free 30-minute gap review, or contact us see how we deliver ALTA-aligned IT and cybersecurity controls as a managed service.