'Level II' E-Recording Generates Interest.

U.S. Recordings, a provider of mortgage recording services, has expanded its Level II electronic recording of mortgage documents with the inclusion of three heavily populated counties to the electronic recording arena.

Tarrent County, Texas; King County, Wash.; and Philadelphia County, Pa., have begun receiving Level II documents from U.S. Recordings. Level II recording allows "tiff" files to come in through the Internet site with PIN and password security and digital signature, allowing counties to populate indexing fields with XML data.

Jeff Carlson, president and CEO of U.S. Recordings, said that interest is growing in Level II recording, which allows lenders to transmit electronic data along with imaged documents to county recorders.

Electronic recording is divided into three levels. In Level I, lenders just take an image of a document and send it along with little information, Mr. Carlson explained. That improves workflow, but there is not much data communication attached to the imaged documents.

Level II also involves sending an imaged document, but key data points are included in XML format so the county does not have to retype information such as grantor name, mortgage amount and dates. "What's nice about [Level] II is the flexibility of the documents, and yet it still passes data along to the ...