On the heels of our first-ever Agent Appreciation month, Inman is leaping into February with our Residential Finance theme month. Join us as we investigate how buying and selling a home is changing, from companies backing consumers in new ways to integrated services that handle the entire transaction.
Fidelity National Financial (FNF), a title insurance and transaction service provider for the real estate and mortgage industries, has expanded its WireSafe consumer wire fraud protection program with a new secure digital workspace for conducting transactions called “startSafe.”
“It is our mission to advance, expand and protect the life changing experience of homeownership,” Randy Quirk, CEO of FNF, said in a statement. “StartSafe represents a significant step towards this vision.”
WireSafe is an educational program FNF created to provide consumers with information about wire fraud and how to develop safe practices as well as to formalize wire instruction during consumer real estate transactions.
StartSafe will elaborate on this program by superseding email as a workspace for residential real estate transactions and providing a more secure space for such transactions.
The portal requires multifactor authentication at first, but once users are authenticated, they will not need to fill out forms or exchange email to share the information necessary for initiating a transaction. Rather, buyers and sellers will be able to verify or update their information within the portal from a smartphone, tablet or desktop as needed to progress toward closing.
“[StartSafe] helps lessen the dependency on email and immediately introduces the consumer to an authenticated digital portal,” Jason Nadeau, chief digital officer of FNF, said in a statement. “This portal requires multifactor authentication to identify the user and mitigate risk associated with collecting information as part of the first steps in a home sale or purchase.”
