Turning Prior Policies Into Growth: AI Built for Title Agents | Ep 109

In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve. Get ready for a transformative journey. Hello everyone, and welcome to the number one podcast in the title industry. I am your host, Mo Choumil, CEO of Alltech National Title.

Today, I have a pleasure of having my good friend Lily Farhandi, co-founder and CEO of Razi. Lily combines a background in computer engineering, fintech, and product leadership with a mission to help title professionals work more efficiently, use their existing data more effectively, and create sustainable growth. Welcome, Lily. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I'm excited. Oh, we always, uh, hey, thank you so much for being on the show. And, uh, of course, uh, we always start the podcast by, uh, telling us your story, where you grew up and how you got into the industry. Sure. Um, so I am originally Iranian.

Was born and raised in Tehran and moved to the U.S. back in 2008 for school. Um, so I started, uh, my college degree in computer engineering back in Tehran and then transferred to Purdue for 2 years. And then after I graduated, I started working at Accenture as a management consultant for financial services. Um, so I was in banking building, you know, software applications.

The immigration was hard, definitely, you know, leaving my hometown and traveling to a new world and the unknown. Uh, I had visited the U.S. before I completely moved. Um, but, you know, for sure, when you move completely to a different country, that's a completely different story. Um, going to school to Purdue was definitely a great bridge between leaving Tehran and moving here and starting the real world, um, in adulthood.

So that was great. I am very appreciative of that experience. Um, started as at Accenture as a programmer and really worked on software development for financial services. And that's where I feel like the experience at Accenture and then throughout the years working at fintech and different companies has given me the ability to learn and experience how to do digital transformations and implement efficiencies and technologies in companies regardless of their size, really. Like step by step, um, learning how there's a lot of ways to fail a project.

Um, and then of course, you know, taking every measure possible to making sure a product is launched successfully and goes to market successfully as well. The title industry is built on accumulated knowledge and trusted relationships. What parts of that legacy must technology protect rather than disrupt? I feel like definitely something that technology can never replace, um, not even think about replacing, is that trust and relationship, as you pointed out. Um, the relationships can never really be replaceable.

Even for me, has been amazing working in this industry, meeting people, building this relationship. Um, has made me learn a ton, um, even about myself. Uh, I identify as a 95% introvert person with every personality test that I can, that I have taken over the years. Uh, but even for me, I feel like working as long as I have in the title industry, I, even me as an introvert, I look forward to go to conferences. meet the people that I know and have built this, you know, loyal friendship and trusting business relationship with.

I saw you work the room at the Title Reps Only a couple weeks ago. You did just fine. Thank you. Thanks. So, uh, what did you observe inside the title industry that made you think there has to be a better way?

I I think from the beginning, what stayed with me was, you know, I saw, um, going to title companies, um, visiting folks on site, meeting with a lot of title company owners, processors, escrow officers, no matter the role, it felt like title companies work on a file for, say, average of 30 to 45 days to close that transaction from start to finish. They put a ton of time and a lot of investment into collecting information, reviewing them, analyzing it, preparing reports for that transaction, that property. And that to me, which has been the backbone and the mission for Razi is how can we help now title companies take advantage of this time and effort that they're putting in? And in, you know, 3 ways is how can we help them utilize that time and investment they're putting into creating efficiencies in their work and operations, into reducing costs for their operations, And then the third one is helping them utilize that information, utilize their internal data, um, to grow their business. So Razi began as an exchange for prior title policies.

For listeners unfamiliar with that problem, why are prior policies valuable and why have they been historically been so difficult to find and then reuse? You know, some background. A prior policy led a title— if there is a prior policy that exists, it's not too old, then a title company can save time and money by utilizing the information that is in a prior policy and then just update it from the time that that policy was issued instead of In absence of a prior policy, then a title company needs to do a full title search. A CR search or full search, yeah. Yes, exactly.

Historically has been difficult to access and use the data in these prior policies because they live, these prior policies live in fragments. They live in someone's hard drive or in RoundQuest's file scan, or even in some cases, They are physical files in a storage room somewhere. And, you know, we saw that if you access it, if you can easily with low cost access these prior policies, then you can utilize that information. The way to utilize it is to index it. And there wasn't an affordable, fast indexing way for these prior policies.

Um, so then title companies ended up, you know, having to spend more time and cost indexing it. So that's kind of the story behind why we built the prior policy, uh, management system. So the, you mean indexing, being able to find that policy quickly? Exactly. Exactly.

So that, you know, I have, maybe I have a file number, so I want to be able to search by file number. Maybe someone else has a policy number. Maybe another person only has an address. And how can we make, index these prior policies in a way that they're very easily searchable? So by keyword and not, you know, if I have to put 5 different, uh, data fields, then it's not fast.

So Razi has evolved from policy exchange and document management to lead gen, CRM, and broader sales enablement. How much of that evolution followed your original vision and how much came from listening to our agents and customers? Yeah, so, um, you know, we have always kind of stuck to our original vision of let's make the data that each title company has valuable for them and let's, you know, help them utilize that. So that has always stayed with the different products that we have built. But it is true, we have our prior policy management system.

We have now focused on making that indexing as a service into a standalone product that our customers can use and then decide what they want to do with that. Indexed information however they want to. And, you know, as you mentioned, the additional capabilities, the lead generation, which is now something that we invest heavily from the marketing perspective, wasn't on our initial roadmap. It was probably not on the first, second, or even fifth one. That was definitely listening to customers.

And 2, 3 years ago when we rolled it out as a product, you know, we saw that title companies and we heard them that they were struggling to create market share and grow their market share. And this was an opportunity to help them grow their business. So what does the modern title agent need to become that did not need to be 5 or 10 years ago? I feel like title companies need to think about growth and more than ever think about creating efficiencies. So, you know, as far as growth goes, maybe 5, 10 years ago, there was so much business in any area that you didn't need to think about sales or Marketing or having a competitive advantage.

Right now, the past couple of years, it has proven that you need to, as a title company, in order to survive, you need to consider those. You need to prioritize those. You need to have a competitive advantage. And then the other thing is thinking about creating efficiencies. There is A lot of opportunities, a lot of products and software out there that can help title companies.

And that's another, I feel like, way for title companies to think about, um, what they need in order to survive. Because, you know, there's some, again, so many products that instead of repetitive tasks, you can think about, um, building new relationships and maintaining existing ones. Razi developed TitleGPT to index and understand title documents. What can purpose-built AI accomplish that traditional software or a general AI assistant cannot? The main challenge with the application of AI and maybe utilizing the general purpose AI assistant Is the accuracy, is, is the hallucination that we all know and talk about.

Um, how can we make sure that it's accurate and how can we make sure to stop that hallucination? So when I ask the AI 100 times a specific question, then I want it to, um, answer me every single time the same answer, identical. Um, and that's why we built the, you know, purpose-built AI and TitleGPT to index these documents is that make it deterministic instead of, you know, a general purpose that might hallucinate. So what, uh, what guardrails, how do you Uh, eliminate that hallucination. As you know, like that data may be accurate, but sometimes, uh, whatever models reads it, and I mean, I, I run into this all the time.

Besides, I'm sorry, I did not mean to, like Claude, ChatGPT, you name it. It's like, I'm sorry, I did not mean to be like, at least the, the, the, the models are very polite when they, when they're wrong. They are. They are. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. It is to focus on making sure that it's Like vertically specific to, for example, indexing title-specific documents, and then continue to tune it as they see documents coming in and you see different templates, you see different versions, continue to spend time on tuning it and then validating the data originally we started validating the data manually, so we would do that. But then, you know, we were able to kind of make that also automated so that we're validating with minimal human in the middle. Of course, you know, with title, there is always, continues to be a need for a human in the middle for title companies. So Razi's built a lead gen— lead generation tool to alert title companies when previously insured properties return to the markets as a listing.

How can agents use that intelligence to create genuinely valuable conversation rather than another automated sales pitch? I know at the Title Reps Only conference last week, David Bravo Jr. was talking how much he loves that product, and I think they get like 10, 12% Kind of a conversion rate on it, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, he's great and I'm glad that the tool is working for his team. Um, and you're right. Like one of the things that has been staying with me since last week that we were there is, um, Sarah Love said something that, um, lead with value. And I, that's exactly what Razi leads provide to title companies, it arms them with a really strong reason and a really good timing to reach out to either an existing real estate agent that they have relationships with, but even start a new conversation with a brand new real estate agent that they might not have a relationship with.

But it, It arms them with that strong reason, that great timing to reach out and have a conversation with, hey, we did this, we did the closing for this property the last time it closed, and we have done the title search, we have seen the property, we know how it's done. You know, I mentioned They collect all of the documents about the property. They review them, they analyze them. So they have all that value internally within that, that within their title company to reach out to the real estate agent and offer that value to them and to their clients, which are the consumers. That's the value of Razi Deeds.

And, you know, then to David, Bravo's conversation, and to his point, the conversation will start with a lead that Rossi sends, and then it's dependent on your salesperson's competency and experience to take that Rossi lead as the first transaction and then turn it to the second and third and fifth transaction with that specific real estate agent and make them A returning customer for your title company. Now, this is invaluable where seller directs transaction. So most of the country, the listing agent directs transaction, then East Coast is heavy buyer, but most of the country, it's invaluable tool to get a lead. How does that work exactly? Is it the MLS feed connected to your database?

And then when there's a trigger, then it sends an alert to the title agents? If the listing comes live? Yes. Yes. And we do have folks in Northeast, so even like buyer markets that still see a value with the same type of conversation.

But you are right that seller markets makes things a little bit more, makes that conversation a little bit more easier. Yes, we do. We, so we work with title companies on onboarding. We get the report from all of the past closings that they did. We only really need the property address, and then we monitor those property addresses and notify them when those properties go back on the market, and then we provide the listing agent information to the title company.

That's awesome. And, uh, yeah, that's a— thank you for adding that. That value to title agents. So, uh, let's switch to, uh, what comes next. Um, imagine ideal title transaction 5 years from now.

What will feel dramatically different for the title agents, um, realtor, and the consumer? Yeah. Um, I feel like first and foremost, um, the consumer will know exactly what is happening in every Every step of the way, every second of time, they know they're, they're way more educated and way, way more aware of the process so that they can follow it and understand it. More transparent, see more. Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Um, and, you know, I feel like it just comes with educating them. Um, Keeping them up to date about the process so that that can help them learn more about the step-by-step of all of the things that happens for a title transaction to go through. Um, from title companies and title professionals, you know, they spend way less time doing repeatable tasks and they're, they can spend time on building relationships and doing the judgment calls. Where it's really valuable. And then I think for, for real estate agents, they can get the work done faster so that they can get their commission faster, you know?

So, uh, as AI takes over more administrative tasks, do you believe the title professional's role becomes smaller or more valuable? I believe it definitely becomes more valuable and it will grow. Um, it will become, it will become more sensitive. Um, automation and AI will remove the need to do all of the low, like grunt work and repetitive tasks. And then their role will become more valuable in the relationships, in meeting with customers, in advising.

Um, and, you know, again, the judgment calls. Talk to people for a change. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Instead of hide behind texts and emails. Exactly. 100%. Okay. So what is Razi building right towards now that would've sounded unrealistic when you founded the company?

We did not build Razi to be an AI company. Um, our, where we started was to fix a, um, paperwork problem, uh, access problem. Um, Now, fast forward, we are focusing, which at that point felt realistic, um, is building things like TitleGPT, or, and, you know, now we're focusing on building TitleMCP, which is actually a layer between the different LLMs that you have, like ChatGPT or Claude or any of them, and your title operational tools like Qualia or SoftPro. And, you know, on top of that, how you can layer between, bridge the gap between the LLMs and the county software or lien search. So that's kind of what we've been focusing on and kind of, um, developing, which definitely didn't see it, uh, when we started Razi a couple of years ago.

Uh, what is one bold Prediction you have for title industry that many leaders may not agree with you yet? Um, don't mean to put you on the spot, but yeah, I'm all about the future and, uh, I'm a futurist optimist. Yeah, we're definitely interested in hearing your thoughts too, but I believe title agencies that are selling services using software in 10 years, let's say, will be competing against companies that are selling the work done to a consumer, a home buyer, or a lender. Um, so imagine, you know, that's, I feel like where we're going to see the industry go is that competition. Competition as far as what?

More players, less players? I would think with, with that model, I would say it's going to be more, more players. Um, but then the, the dynamics will be Like your existing, right now, how you have title companies that use software that might be AI enabled. I'm at this point, all of, I feel majority of the products and techs have an AI component. So a service, selling the service using those softwares versus a company that comes in that sells it as a package.

Like job done to a home buyer, or, you know, in many cases, maybe a mortgage company, a lender. Um, as we always end the show with a couple questions, uh, the first one is, um, do you have a favorite quote? Actually, um, since last week that we were both at TRO, I feel like this has I said it before, um, Sarah Love from First National International Title, um, said something in her session that she had to, um, lead with value that has been resonating with me so much. It has become my favorite quote since last week. So, um, I'm loving it.

I'm, uh, definitely utilizing it, uh, these days. All right. Sarah, Sarah, if you listen to this podcast, you make an impact. Um, and, uh, and next question is that do you have a favorite book or one that you read recently that sticks with you? Yeah.

Um, so my all-time favorite book is called My Uncle Napoleon. Um, it's written by an Iranian, um, writer, author called Iraj Pezeshzad. He passed away a couple of years ago. Um, I grew up with this book and they made a, um, TV series out of it. So grew up with reading it, um, and watching the TV shows probably every day, a little bit of it.

Um, the story takes place in Tehran in 1940s. So, you know, oof, almost 100 years ago, um, during Second World War. Um, there is an English translation. I have read that. It's amazing.

I feel like it just connects me back to the culture, family. It has a really great dark humor. The literature is great. So, um, that's it. Favorite book of all time.

That's awesome. I'm glad, I'm glad it's in English. So it'll be, uh, next on my list on Audible. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you have any, uh, last words for our audience?

I cannot thank you enough, but I just want any last words. I really appreciate this. Thanks for having me. And yeah, that's it, I think. I assume I will see you at the next conference.

Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much, Lily. And to our audience, if you enjoyed the show, please make sure to subscribe, but most importantly, give us a 5-star review. And until next time, I'm Mo Choumil.

Have a wonderful day. Thank you. Bye. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Choumil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve.

Get ready for a transformative journey.