Orange Coast Title Completes SOC Examination
February 10, 2015
Orange Coast Title Company and its family of title companies, a national provider of title and escrow services based in Santa Ana, Calif., recently completed its SSAE 16 Service Organization Control (SOC 1 Type I and Type II) examination and was certified for both with “NO EXCEPTIONS” to ALTA’s Best Practices. This includes all 26 of the companies that compromise OCT’s family of companies.
The SOC report is dived into two halves, one focused on information security and the other covering all other issues. The report is designed to meet the needs of user entities’ management and auditors as they evaluate the effect of a service organization’s controls on a user entity’s financial statement assertions. These reports are important components of user entities’ evaluation of their internal controls over financial reporting for purposes of compliance with laws and regulations and for when user entity auditors plan and perform financial statement audits.
“We are pleased that our SSAE 16 reports have shown that we have suitably designed our systems and that we are operating with effective controls.” said Rich Macaluso, president of Orange Coast Title. “As part of our mission to the Real Estate Lending Industry and commitment to our clients; we strive to deliver the best product possible. By going through such an extensive six month auditing process, we are now able to provide lenders and other financial institutions a report that addresses their concerns in a format which is most familiar to them.”
The SSAE 16 requirements became a hot topic in the financial industry after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the regulatory body that supervises all national banks, federal savings associations and foreign banks, issued a bulletin on Oct. 30, 2013, detailing third-party relationships and risk-management guidelines.
“Lending institutions, warehouse providers, secondary investors and FDIC banks are looking for security from their critical third-party vendors and the SSAE 16 has become the standard that many in the industry are requiring from their title insurance providers,” said Bill Burding, Orange Coast Title Company’s executive vice president and general counsel, “In evaluating which title company to use in a given transaction, it is becoming critical to choose a company that has achieved a SSAE 16 certification from an independent auditor to make sure that the consumer is protected. Our SOC I and II reports describes our controls, our auditors testing of our controls and our auditor’s opinion on the fairness of our description, suitability of the design and operating effectiveness of our controls.”
Regulators’ increased demand to protect consumers has forced lenders to adjust their relationships with service providers and be more sensitive to the types of companies they do business with. To help meet this need, ALTA created the Best Practices framework to help members highlight policies and procedures the industry exercises to protect lenders and consumers, while ensuring a positive and compliant real estate settlement experience.
By implementing the policies and guidelines of ALTA’s Best Practices, title companies demonstrate that they have implemented the controls to mitigate risks to protect consumers and protect intuitions from liability.
Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or [email protected].