FNF Expands Its WireSafe Consumer Wire Fraud Protection Program To Include startSafe™ - A New Digital Opening Package For Consumers

News provided by

Feb 27, 2020, 06:25 ET

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Feb. 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Fidelity National Financial, the leading provider of title insurance and transaction services to the real estate and mortgage industries, today announced that it has expanded its WireSafe home buyer and seller program to include startSafe™, a new digital opening package for consumers engaged in a home purchase with any one of the FNF family of title companies.

"It is our mission to advance, expand, and protect the life changing experience of home ownership. To do this we will leverage everything at our disposal to bring to market a truly reimagined, trusted, and transparent experience for agents, buyers, and sellers - - from start to finish," said Randy Quirk, Fidelity National Financial's Chief Executive Officer. "startSafe^™ represents a significant step towards this vision."

Wire fraud is real and home buyers and sellers are often the biggest targets. As a result, FNF developed the WireSafe program to help educate consumers about wire fraud, inform them on what they can do to keep themselves WireSafe, and to formalize the receipt of wire instructions when buying and selling a home.

"startSafe™ takes this effort to a new level by immediately engaging home buyers and sellers with one of our title companies in a secure digital workspace," said Jason Nadeau, Fidelity National Financial's Chief Digital Officer.

Historically, email has been the primary workspace of residential real estate transactions, but this comes with inherent risks. Consumers and real estate agents may not have taken the proper steps to protect their email against bad actors who want to infiltrate this treasure trove of personal data and access it with the intent to defraud an unsuspecting home buyer or seller. FNF's startSafe™ opening package serves as an entry point into a better, more intuitive digital consumer experience when buying or selling a home. "startSafe™," continues Nadeau, "helps lessen the the dependency on email and immediately introduces the consumer to a authenticated digital portal. 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."

Once a home buyer or seller is authenticated, they no longer have to fill out forms or exchange emails in order to share information needed to start a real estate transaction. Rather, through a safe, intelligent, question-based, intuitive website, home buyers and sellers can verify or update information needed to keep their transaction progressing toward closing. In addition, buyers and sellers are presented with educational content about wire fraud and asked to digitally acknowledge the receipt of important wire instructions. All of this can be done from the convenience of a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer.

The FNF family of title companies, who participated in over two million real estate transactions in 2019, have an unprecedented opportunity to seamlessly introduce buyers and sellers to this new, safer, digital way of starting every real estate transaction.

"So far, initial results show that not only are home buyers and sellers open to this type of digital interaction, but they welcome it," said Nadeau. "We are seeing significant adoption and completion rates and expect these to continue as we roll startSafe™ out to all our markets this year."

About Fidelity National Financial, Inc.
Fidelity National Financial, Inc. (NYSE: FNF) is a leading provider of title insurance and transaction services to the real estate and mortgage industries. FNF is the nation's largest title insurance company through its title insurance underwriters - Fidelity National Title, Chicago Title, Commonwealth Land Title, Alamo Title and National Title of New York - that collectively issue more title insurance policies than any other title company in the United States. More information about FNF can be found at fnf.com.

SOURCE Fidelity National Financial, Inc.