Notarize.com is making its way through the United States, strategically, picking and choosing exactly how it rolls itself out to Notaries, The General Public, and Title & Escrow. Here is what we know (and we hope you'll listen). Aside from going after some of the biggest names in the Real Estate Industry for business they are also partnering with FedEx and UPS Stores across the country. That's okay, right? The free market, free enterprise, etc? But there are a lot of things we at Notary Stars see as problems or hurdles that Notaries, The Public, and Notarize all need to analyze and hopefully help change! #1) NOTARIZE.COM IS NOT APPROVED BY EVERY STATE'S SECRETARY OF STATE BUT SEEMS TO BE ADVERTISING IN EVERY STATE THROUGH LOCAL SEARCHES THROUGH SEO FOR "CONVENIENCE." THE IDENTIFIABLE PROBLEM WE SEE WITH THIS IS THAT NOTARIZATION SEEMS TO BE ASKING NOTARIZATION FEES WELL ABOVE MOST STATES' NOTARY MINIMUMS... YET PAYING THE NOTARY ONLY $5 PER NOTARIZATION AS A CONTRACTOR IN AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT STATE. No matter what State you are in these days, Notarize.com, seems to already have a landing page generated to advertise its solution. They want to sell you the convenience of getting your documents Notarized online for $25 for the first document and $10 for each additional Notarized document. It sounds good for convenience but what they don't tell you is that if you are located in Arizona any Notary can only charge you LEGALLY $10 per Notarized document, even for RON. Which is $15 above the asking price. This will vary by States for in-person and Remote Online Notarizations as well. How are they doing this? That is easy. They aren't using local Notaries for your State (the whole economic catastrophe of that is another story). They outsource your Notary needs or Notary Business to other States where they can charge more and then still pay the Notary less because they have "volume." And, at much less percentages than the Mobile Notary Public & Loan Signing Agency Industry has ever seen. 2) NOTARIZE.COM IS CHARGING REAL ESTATE CLIENTS FULL LOAN SIGNING AGENT FEES (RANGING FROM $125 TO 200+ PER CLOSING) BUT ONLY OFFERING $15-25 MAXIMUM TO THEIR NOTARIES UNDER CONTRACT. Loan Signing Agents have been paid anywhere from $85to $250 for decades for their services for Mobile Notary. Loan Signing Agents They take additional training to explain documents in a sale, resale, or refinance of a home to the client but now that Notarize has come along Title Companies could be getting shafted on the customer service aspects of external closings. Would you take the time to explain a Real Estate Transaction if you were only making $15 to $25? Real Estate transactions on average take no longer than 6 months to start to come to reality and can take over 45 minutes to 1 hour to sign properly, traditionally. It is understandable trying to "streamline," but why are Title Companies not resisting this? #3) AS OF THIS POSTING. A NOTARY IN CERTAIN STATES CAN "BRING THEIR OWN TITLE CLIENTS" TO THE PLATFORM BUT WHEN THEY COMPLETE THEIR ORDER, ONLY THE SIGERS HAVE ACCESS TO THE THEIR SIGNED DOCUMENTS WHICH TAKES THE NOTARY LOAN SIGNING AGENT OUT OF THE EQUATION ALTOGETHER WITH THEIR TITLE CLIENT. WE CAN JUST CALL THIS A WHITEWASH OF WHITE LABELING. Loan Signing Agents need to be careful of sites that operate like this. Especially if you are concerned with having a direct business. Forcing Title to obtain the signed documents from either the Signers or Notarize only pushes your clients closer to a technology designed to take your job away. #4) IT IS RUMORED THAT NOTARIZE.COM IS ALLOWING PEOPLE (NOTARIES WITH CLICKERS) TO TAKE ORDERS AT RANDOM SO THEY CAN OBTAIN MORE ORDERS. This has not yet been verified but it is rumored that Notaries are using third-party programs and just clicking away to get any order on the Notarize platform which just turns what use to be an eloquent career into a cattle call. This truly goes against what we as Notaries & Loan Signing Agents have stood for years. HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS? We could decide NOT to work for platforms that do not pay adequate fees, or outsource our local Notary work, and write Title Agencies locally. That's a start. But decisions about our industry are not made at the National Notary Association's Annual Conference. Nor, at any other conference put together for us. They are made in two very prominent places; The American Escrow Association's Annual Conference & Your Local State's Local Escrow Association's Conference. If you spend any money this year on any conferences you should attend these two conferences and no others. Talk to the leaders of Title and Escrow and vocalize your opinions. These types of conferences may not be as affordable as the National Notary Association's conferences but The NNA is only going to invite RON Platforms in to talk and sell you their platforms- that's what conferences are to do. At least by attending these conferences you can mingle with decision makers to vocalize your thoughts on how platforms should take Notary Loan Signing Agents into consideration.
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