How We’re Keeping You Safer

Good check

Fraud in general is on the rise, but fraud in the banking industry is particularly frightening these days. Thieves have gotten much bolder and technologically savvy, forcing business owners – and consumers – to be even more careful with their private and sensitive information. As a matter of fact, fraud directly relating to checks and wires is on the rise and becoming a real headache for banks and title companies.

Cumberland Title recently instituted one more precaution to hopefully alleviate the fear of fraud for those who do business with us. We have implemented Positive Pay, an automated fraud detection tool. In a nutshell, it is a service that matches the account number, check number, and dollar amount of each check presented for payment against a list of checks that have previously been authorized and issued by Cumberland Title. All three of these check components must match exactly, or they bank will not pay out on the check when it is presented.

Each day, Cumberland Title will send a file of issued checks to the bank. When those checks are presented for payment at the bank, they are compared electronically against the list of transmitted checks. If a check is presented that does not have a “match” in the file sent from Cumberland Title, the bank will then send us an image of the check that is attempting to be cashed, so that we can review it and either instruct the bank to pay it or not.

Our rule of thumb is “better to be safe than sorry”, so in addition to a number of other internal precautions that we regularly take to protect both us and our clients, this is just one more safety measure that you can feel confident about when working with Cumberland Title.