Outsourcing Notary Work

Outsourcing Notary Work
 
Many people think of outsourcing as hiring a company in another country to handle some of your back office tasks, and sometimes it is.  Companies overseas also hire American companies to do all types of tasks as well, generally tasks involving a higher level of technology since our labor rate is expensive.  But, hiring another company in your same town to do tasks that your own company can not efficiently do, is another type of outsourcing.
 
Notary Outsourcing
Mortgage documents used to be signed at banks, and lender’s offices throughout the nation.  California and Florida have led the nationwide trend towards mobile notaries that the rest of the states are now engaging in as well.  For the last decade or more, independent mobile notaries trained in loan signing have been outsourced to take over what used to be the jobs of employees.  Its easier.  You don’t have to do payroll, pay benefits, or even pay at all in many cases.
 
Free labor?
Notaries beware!  Background checks are an absolute necessity.  No!  Not companies background checking you. You have to background check them to make sure they feel a responsibility to pay notaries for their work.  Otherwise, you will end up a statistic.  I could estimate that 5% of loan signing jobs go unpaid.  The non-paying company might have gone belly-up, or perhaps the notary made a mistake.  In some cases, the loan didn’t go through, the signing company didn’t get paid, and they decided to take the liberty to not pay the notary.  “Notaries Ye Be Warned!!!”  There are pirates out there!
 
No Responsibilities
If business is slow, you just don’t hire anyone.  If you have bank employees, the salaries have to be paid every week of every month whether their is business or not. Loan signing business is typically faster during the last week of the month, and some months are faster than others.
 
Outsourcing can often save a company a lot of money.  However, by outsourcing your notary work, you lose control of who is doing the work.  Independent notaries are not always the best trained.  Most are not certified by any agency, and lack the experience and suaveness to handle sticky situations.  The highly experienced notaries generally want to get paid very handsomely.  So, outsourcing has its pros and cons, but its the standard way of business in the notary world today!