News & Resources

1st Quarter 2007

Recorders' Corner
Nancy Becker
Recorder of Deeds, Montgomery County, PA

It's been a cold month in Montgomery County, and when the temperatures dip to below freezing, people don't like to go outside. One effect of this winter weather is that we've received a number of inquiries about eRecording from people who would rather not leave their homes or offices.

In Montgomery County we try to encourage eRecording because we feel it's a service to our clients. One of the major factors in our decision to go with eRecording is the speed and ease of recording a document remotely, both for the Submitter and the Recorder. For the Submitter, the document gets submitted almost immediately via the Internet. The recording occurs usually the same day and the Submitter is able to retrieve the recorded document the same or next day. The best part of all, neither the Submitter nor the document leaves the office. That's a real benefit on an icy cold or snowy day!

For the Recorder, the primary benefit is that eRecording takes less than half the time than paper documents to process. So Counties that have taken on eRecording have been able to streamline their staff. I've been able to shift resources onto other projects that have been on hold for a long time.

By utilizing RecordFusion's advanced OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) technology, a lot of the information is identified and indexed automatically. The system uses ACH (Automated Clearing House) eliminating check writing and processing.

The situation with the cold weather is funny because the people who are now inquiring about eRecording were the skeptics who didn't want to bother with it before. They thought they would have to buy another system to put on their computer. Some were wary of changing from a process they had come to know so well to a process that could be more costly or difficult to use. They didn't know how it was going to work.

With our new RecordFusion product, they don't have to install any software – they just need to get on the Internet. They do have to set up an account that provides us with some basic information. Now, many of the small vendors really love it. With the cost of gas and parking, plus their time – everyone's time is valuable – they see the value in eRecording. Now they just do it cost-effectively from their home or office.

I would estimate that about 10% of our documents are being recorded electronically since the implementation of the RecordFusion system was completed in October 2006. It is my goal to have at least 50% of our documents recorded through eRecording.

We are working hard to get the word out to our vendors about the availability of eRecording – through press releases, attending meetings with industry partners and in County brochures returned with recorded documents and available in our office. But the most effective way is through word of mouth – talking to the people that we deal with regularly.

When you can give people choices, they will choose what's best for them. We offer two ways to record, the traditional way using paper or electronically. Giving our industry partners a choice is just another way. The Recorder of Deeds works hard to provide the residents of Montgomery County with the highest level of service possible.