Automating Compliance: How Powerful New Tech Tools Protect Broker-owners

Last fall, Form Simplicity, one of the real estate industry's most popular and advanced paperless transaction management solutions that was created by the Florida Realtors®, added Broker Transaction Management as a standard feature at no additional cost to customers.

The reason this is significant is that perhaps no task is more mundane – yet more important – than the compliance issues that brokerage management faces. Broker Transaction Management creates a single place for real estate broker-owners to manage, review, approve, track and store every agent's transaction activity from beginning to end.

It was also the motivation behind deploying these features without any additional costs to Form Simplicity customers because this need is universal: Every brokerage must deal with compliance issues every day. Broker transaction management tools shouldn't be something you have to pay for separately; it should be a standard feature within every transaction management system.

Risk management

Reducing risk through compliance is a key role for real estate management. These new broker tools reduce risk through a customizable, automated, paperless review process that helps safeguard brokerage transactions to remain compliant.

First, brokers can collaborate with their agents throughout the transaction review process to ensure accuracy across a streamlined workflow. Second, these tools also offer office transparency: brokers track email and text correspondence for every transaction. This not only gives brokers visibility into each agent's transaction activity, it also allows brokers to evaluate, comment on and approve all forms digitally submitted by their agents.

Automating a paper trail

Creating a well-documented paper trail is vital, particularly in today's litigious society. Automating the creation of this paper trail can be a godsend to a broker who is juggling multiple priorities everyday. So it was vital in developing these new broker tools that Form Simplicity would integrate features that not only provided the information a broker needs, but also were easy to use. These tools needed to be intuitive to use, essentially eliminating the need for training.

That's why design became a key element to deliver details at a glance. For example, the broker tools provide a detailed history of each checklist review, as well as a fully customizable, color-coded, checklist system. This allows a broker to quickly see agent activity by transaction type. The color-coded "Status" field makes it easy for a broker to rapidly prioritize what they need to do next (see chart below) and allows them to immediately review any item with just one click.

Moreover, the Broker Review feature allows agents to submit electronically their completed contracts to their broker for final approval. During the digital review process, when brokers or agents add comments, each party is automatically alerted, which expedites the process online. When the broker marks the submission as complete or incomplete, Form Simplicity automatically notifies the agent of the change in status.

The paper trail is readily accessible as the review process logs all comments and activities made throughout the office workflow.

Made by Realtors® for Realtors®

One of the biggest advantages Form Simplicity has over other transaction management systems available for brokerages is the fact that the development remains fully integrated as part of Florida Realtors® and is not a standalone company. That means Realtors not only created Form Simplicity, but ongoing feedback from people who do this for a living every day shapes the future development and refinement of the system.

In fact, the development of the Broker Transaction Management tools that are embedded into Form Simplicity was driven by client recommendations. The fact that product development is driven by brokers and agents – and not solely by technologists – helps avoid feature-bloat, eliminating unneeded bells and whistles that agents and brokers will never use.

Finally, being Realtor-owned means Form Simplicity isn't just industry-friendly: Form Simplicity is industry provided, meaning selling out isn't an option, something becoming more vital to brokerages when making a decision of which transaction management system to purchase.

Tricia Stamper is Director of Technology at Florida Realtors® and manages both Tech Helpline and Form Simplicity.