BeforeYouSignWithAnotherTitleTechVendor,AskTheseFiveQuestions

A wire verification tool does not fail on a slow Tuesday morning. It fails at 4:45 PM on a Friday, twenty minutes before a closing has to fund and the bank's outgoing wire window slams shut for the weekend. I have sat with more than one Texas title company while that clock ran out, and in that moment, the feature list on the vendor's homepage stops mattering. The only question anyone cares about is who picks up the phone.

That moment is more common than it should be. Business email compromise cost victims $3.05 billion in 2025, up from $2.77 billion the year before, and real estate transaction fraud specifically jumped 59 percent year over year to $275 million, according to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report. Title and settlement companies sit at the exact point in a transaction where the money moves, which is why ALTA lists wire fraud among the most significant threats facing the industry and publishes vendor-vetting guidance alongside it. We wrote about how that attack actually unfolds at closing in a previous post on wire fraud in title and settlement, and the pattern holds here too: the software gets scrutinized. The vendor rarely does.

I understand why. Most title companies buy a wire verification or fraud prevention tool the way most people buy a fire extinguisher, right after something almost burned down: an underwriter flagged a gap, a near-miss shook up the office, or a competitor got hit and everyone got nervous. Under that kind of pressure, the sales demo becomes the whole evaluation, and the contract gets signed on trust in the feature set rather than clarity on what happens when the feature set is not enough.

Here are the five questions worth asking before you sign, not after something goes wrong.

Who Answers the Phone After Hours, and What Will They Actually Commit To in Writing?

Ask for the support tier that applies outside 9-to-5, in writing, with a response time attached to it. "Someone will get back to you" is not a service level. Closings do not respect business hours, and Friday afternoon is when transaction volume and staff availability are both working against you. If the vendor cannot point to a contractual response window for a system-down call at 4:45 PM on a Friday, you do not have a support plan. You have a hope.

Where Does Your Liability End and Mine Begin If the Tool Fails or Gets Breached?

If the vendor's platform goes down mid-closing, or the vendor itself is the point of compromise, whose indemnification clause governs the loss? Ask what cyber liability insurance the vendor carries, whether it covers your exposure or only theirs, and whether their contract shifts risk onto you by default. A vendor who stumbles on this question in the sales call will stumble on it during an actual incident.

How Does This Tool Fit Into My ALTA Best Practices Audit Trail?

ALTA's Best Practices framework expects title agencies to run a documented information security program, and a wire verification tool is part of the evidence an auditor or underwriter will want to see. We covered what that documentation actually needs to look like in our ALTA Best Practices Pillar 3 audit readiness checklist. Before signing, ask the vendor for a sample audit report or compliance summary you could hand an examiner today. If they cannot produce one, you will be building that evidence yourself later, under a deadline, with a vendor who will not return your calls until Monday.

Who Owns Security at the Point Where Your System Talks to Mine?

Every integration is a handoff, and every handoff is a place where accountability gets fuzzy. Ask specifically how data is encrypted between your systems and theirs, what subprocessors touch that data, and who is responsible if the breach happens at the seam, not inside either system. Vendors are generally comfortable describing their own security. Fewer are prepared to describe the boundary, and that boundary is exactly where fraud increasingly lives. Voice-cloning tools now need only a few seconds of real audio to produce a convincing impersonation of a seller, agent, or title officer on a live call.

Will You Show Me Your Actual Incident History, Not Just Your Uptime Badge?

A marketing page claiming "99.9% uptime" tells you nothing about what happened the last time it was not up. Ask for real references from title companies your size, ask how the vendor communicated during their last outage or security event, and ask whether you have contractual audit rights or you are simply taking their word for it. A vendor confident in their track record will share it. One who deflects is giving you information too.

None of these five questions are about whether the software works. It usually does. They are about what happens on the day it does not, and whether the answer was decided before you signed, or is being improvised while a wire sits unfunded and a client is on the phone.

This is the same conversation we have with Texas wealth management firms building out their own vendor stacks, which we walked through in our IT readiness playbook for DFW wealth management firms. The specifics change by vertical. The underlying question, who is accountable when the tool everyone is counting on stops working, does not.

If you want a second set of eyes on a vendor contract before you sign, or on the stack you already have, that is a conversation we have regularly with title and settlement companies across DFW. Schedule a strategy session with Techvera and bring the contract. We will read the parts the sales deck skipped.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a title company ask before signing with a wire fraud prevention vendor?

At minimum, ask about after-hours support response times in writing, who is liable if the tool fails or is breached, whether the vendor can produce audit-ready documentation for ALTA Best Practices compliance, how data is secured at the integration point between systems, and whether the vendor will share real incident history and customer references rather than marketing claims.

Who is liable when a wire verification tool fails during a real estate closing?

It depends on the contract, which is exactly the problem. Liability and indemnification terms vary by vendor, and many are written to protect the vendor first. Title and settlement companies should have counsel review these clauses before signing, rather than assume the vendor's insurance automatically covers the title company's exposure.

How often should title and settlement companies review their vendor contracts for accountability?

At renewal, at minimum, and any time the vendor changes ownership, pricing, or its underlying technology stack. Given that real estate fraud losses grew 59 percent year over year according to the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report, an annual review paired with a fresh look at ALTA Best Practices alignment is a reasonable minimum cadence for most firms.