Marshall County is moving ahead with the addition of e-recording services. The county commissioners approved an agreement Monday with e-recording vendor Simplifile.
Simplifile representative Michelle Wilsey told the commissioners the service allows for the secure electronic delivery of items for recording. “It’s a bit like electronic Fed-Ex if you can imagine that,” she explained. “So Simplifile basically, through this procedures agreement, requests from counties a method of access. So kind of like Fed-Ex has a method of entry, a protocol, times that they can come and go, and security measures that are compliant with the county, we’re doing the same thing, except requesting that electronically.”
Once the procedures are set up with the county, Simplifile then makes arrangements with groups that will be submitting the documents. “These are your lenders, banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, title companies, law firms, developers, that professionally, as part of their business, submit documents to the county,” Wilsey said. Simplifile then charges them a fee to send those documents electronically.
Wilsey adds that Fulton and Carroll counties are also signing up for Simplifile. “In the eight years we’ve been in Indiana, we’ve had no security breaches, we’ve had no issues, and we’ve never had a county decide not to continue,” she said.
She also explained that Marshall County’s agreement is a no-cost, no-term, non-exclusive procedures agreement. That allows the county to also offer e-recording through other vendors in the future, something Recorder Marlene Mahler plans to do.
Commissioners Mike Delp and Kurt Garner voted Monday to approve the agreement, pending County Attorney Jim Clevenger’s review. Mahler hopes to have e-recording up and running by April 1. Initially, just the County Recorder’s Office will use the system. But eventually, it may be expanded to the auditor’s and assessor’s offices as well, allowing a wider range of documents to be handled.
