Fidelity Expands Consumer Wire Fraud Protection Program
February 27, 2020
Fidelity National Financial has expanded its WireSafe homebuyer 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.
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 homebuyers 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 homebuyer or seller. FNF's startSafe opening package serves as an entry point into a more intuitive digital consumer experience when buying or selling a home.
Nadeau said the platform reduces dependency on email and 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," Nadeau added.
Once a homebuyer or seller is authenticated, they can verify or update information 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 a smartphone, tablet or desktop computer.
"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."
Contact ALTA at 202-296-3671 or communications@alta.org.