Title Insurance Carriers Industry Profile

Companies in this industry offer insurance policies to protect homeowners and other owners of real estate, as well as real estate creditors. Major companies include Fidelity National Financial, First American Title Insurance, and Old Republic Title.

Many large US-based companies provide title insurance in Europe and in countries such as Australia, Canada, the UK, and South Korea, often for US buyers and lenders. However, the reliability of government systems of land registration reduces the market for title insurance in countries other than the US.

The US title insurance industry includes about 4,000 establishments with combined annual revenue of about $15 billion.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

Home sales and mortgage refinancing are the primary drivers of demand for the title insurance industry. The profitability of individual companies depends on efficient operations because of the large volume of transactions. Large companies benefit from economies of scale in access to large accumulated databases of property records. Small companies can mainly compete by specializing in nonstandard titles or in geographical regions that the large companies don't cover. The US industry is highly concentrated: the 20 largest companies account for about 95% of revenue.

PRODUCTS, OPERATIONS & TECHNOLOGY

A large part of the industry revenue comes from underwriting services (about 90% of the industry's revenue), legal and patent document filing (about 10%), and trading securities and commodity contracts. Other services include real estate consulting services. The two types of title insurance policies, for owners and ...