Like many titles, newly appointed President Iain Bryant stewart title agency sector, entering the industry through families. Kobe’s father founded Inquiry serviceBryant founded a film and television production company in 1990. After growing up in the film and television industry, Bryant said he was determined never to get involved in the industry again.
“My father also had a rule for all his kids that once you graduated, you couldn’t come back to work unless you did something else,” Bryant said.
This, coupled with Bryant’s desire not to purchase title insurance, led him to pursue a career in medical equipment sales and eventually Gartner Corporation, a technology consulting firm. But in 2013, Kobe’s father called and invited him to join the family business. Eventually, his father joined his brother in buying out the family business, which was eventually acquired by Stewart in 2021, with Bryant in his current role at the company.
While Bryant is excited about the new challenges ahead as head of Stewart’s acting division, he is well aware that these are difficult times for the title industry. HousingWire recently caught up with Bryant to discuss some of these challenges and what’s going on with Stewart Title.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Brooklee Han: You recently took over Stewart’s agency division. What is the main goal of your department?
Ian Bryant: It’s not really a change of course for us. Much of what we have focused on in the past will continue to be the focus. I feel very privileged to have met with really great leadership and a great group of agency salespeople across the country, so I can’t say there’s any real change other than continuing the momentum we’ve had.
I think some of the defining reasons why Stewart has made progress over the past few years – we’ve signed a ton of new agents not only in my area but across the country – is because Stewart is an underwriter who cares and has the resources to . We have integration. We have reserves. We have the strength and quality of underwriting, and we combine that with an entity size that is still nimble and can still move quickly based on what our agents are telling us.
I think the intent of our organization from the top down, starting with our CEO, is to build the business on an independent agency model where you listen, you build the capabilities they need, and you share Deployment with economical intent – that is what we are pursuing with our agency team. There are other underwriters that have that intent and have the entrepreneurial spirit and the agility, but they don’t have the reserves or the integration, so bringing those two things together, I think gives agents a unique option in this space, which That’s why we’ve seen really significant growth.
BH: With everything going on in the real estate brokerage space, many company leaders are having similar conversations about the support and resources they provide agents and franchisees, so it’s interesting to hear similar trends happening in the title space .
Bryant: I think the way the underwriter-agent relationship has worked in the past (and has been for about 50 years) is going to change a lot in the next five years. That’s because our customers’ world is changing. What’s happening upstream National Association of Realtors and commission lawsuits, but also the fact that the market is down. We’re facing unprecedented economic pressures, increasing fraud is putting tremendous pressure on independent agents, and of course there’s a brain drain that I don’t think we’ve seen before in this industry.
But it opens up opportunities for partners to show up in new ways, and I think if we can do that like we should and really listen to our agents, recognize their changing world and help their solution, then whoever does it, us or the underwriters, wins.
BH: What solutions are you currently working on to help agents?
Bryant: One of my biggest concerns is that sometimes you see people step into roles like mine, and they come in with a desire to listen, a willingness to change, and a desire to win, but over time they become more and more distant from their customers. Come farther and farther. . This is a fear I have about myself, so in order to prevent this, I think it’s critical that I get in front of the agents and listen to our sales reps and understand what’s going on on the street because it takes To inform our strategy.
For example, another executive here, who is basically the CFO of the division, is part of our program to help agencies with acquisitions, and in some of these conversations, it was clear that when our CFO would In front of these agents, conversations begin to reach a level of depth and revelation that we’ve never experienced before, and we begin to really understand what agents want to know—such as the variable pay ratios associated with salespeople, or what their labor costs are Compared to other companies in the industry.
We pivoted from some of those conversations and he built a suite of services that we now offer our agents called a financial advisory program that they can use to benchmark their financial health against the larger market and other benchmarks. Compare. These activities generate very tangible insights and are of real value to them. Sure, marketing and SEO guidance is important, but at the end of the day, when I’m running my business, I want to know what levers I need to turn to and how I’m doing against industry and benchmark data.
This is just an example of the functionality we offer agents, and ultimately I want to do more of this. How do we take Stewart Title, a 7,000-person organization, and equip it with a two-person independent agency with the same capabilities?
BH: Stewart has been focused on expanding market share. How can advances like this help the company get closer to its growth goals?
Bryant: The challenges of organic growth in the underwriter space are ongoing challenges across the industry. If you look at the trend lines of an underwriter’s overall business, the only way they can sustainably grow and gain market share has historically been through acquisitions. There are very few underwriters achieving sustainable growth across the country – it’s a mature industry and it’s hard to do.
But the property rights are local businesses. At Stuart, I believe our success or failure in relation to our growing agent base depends on our ability to tailor our approach and strategy to each market. The reason why Stewart looks like a great agency partner in Indiana is we’ll share some of the things we do in Florida, but there’s a lot going on in terms of how we approach the agency business and how we create value there. Nuance.
Our ability to customize and provide products, services and resources for each state or agent will determine whether we are able to grow in these markets. That being said, we are starting to see significant growth in the agency sector in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. This growth has always been about our understanding of the market and our agents and our ability to leverage our capabilities in unique ways.
BH: It’s been a pretty newsy time for the games industry lately. What do you think is the biggest storyline?
Bryant: The entities most affected by many of these items are independent title agents, whether it’s attorney submissions, surrender plans, etc. – there’s a lot going on as it relates to what we need to do as an industry, for ourselves and our Independent Attorney Defense. Stewart and many others were active in discussions in Washington because they were so important to our survival.
But ultimately, I try to think about this from the perspective of an independent agent. I think it’s important that they look at their operating model, look at how they interact with their customers, and start to understand their customers and what they want out of the transaction, and what the consumer wants and needs. And then, as title agents, how do they provide materials to real estate agents and agents to better demonstrate their value to consumers and better educate them.
