Official Foresees Electronic Releases.(Navy Federal Credit Union, electronic recording system)(Brief Article)

In five to 10 years, electronic recordation of land-record documents will be commonplace, predicted a panelist at March's MBA technology conference.

Speaking at a session on the practical value of e-mortgages, John Frey, Clerk of the Circuit Court for Fairfax County, Virginia, said his office is already seeing benefits from being able to transmit lien releases electronically. That capability came through a joint pilot effort by his office in concert with digital document provider Ingeo (www.Ingeo.com) and Navy Federal Credit Union.

Serving one of the most active real estate markets in the country, Mr. Frey's office records between 250,000 and 300,000 documents a year, 25% of which are certificates of satisfaction.

The first electronic document recording in Fairfax County took place in September 2001, Mr. Frey said, and the system was officially turned on in January 2000. Since then hundreds of documents have been submitted electronically to Fairfax County's Circuit Court Clerk's Office.

The system already has demonstrated the ability to reduce manual indexing - and indexing errors - by the Clerk's Office staff, Mr. Frey stated. He said the system enables returning a recorded document to the mortgage company on the same day it is recorded, as opposed to the current turnaround time of six to eight weeks for processing and return via mail.

Navy Federal CU branch manager Susan Kihl said the electronic recording system improves processes by eliminating rejected items, speeding processing, eliminating the need to track outstanding items and ...