Electronic Recording Gaining Steam.

Miami -- Electronic recording is picking up momentum as more counties come online and could soon be the common way of recording a loan, panelists at the 8th Annual Mortgage Technology Conference here said.

"We on the county level simply see e-recording as a new medium," said Anne Richards, the deputy director of county records for Broward County, Fla. "We see it as a way of interacting with a business partner to make the process more efficient. We'll accept submission of a digital doc and return it to our trusted lender business partner once we've checked and recorded it."

Broward County began doing e-recordings in July of 2000 and has recorded 10,378 loans. Ms. Richards called e-recording "a necessity."

Broward County processes 5,000 documents a day, she said. "We've had to process a growing number of mortgages throughout the refi boom with the same staffing. So, this streamlines the process and makes us much more efficient. In the end, if this helps us cut our processing time we feel it inevitably does the same for the lender as well."

It took Broward County only three hours to process its first paperless mortgage.

"E-recording and e-notarization are the most significant steps to achieving the complete e-mortgage," noted Carmen Bramante, co-chair for PRIA Technology Committee. "As MISMO releases DTD standards to support e-closing, including e-signing and post closing processes, the whole system will flow much smoother."

At present three types of e-recording are used: transmitting a scanned document, transmitting images and data from a document and finally transmitting a complete SMART Doc. The most ...