National Settlement Services Summit

October Research Corp. kicked off the National Settlement Services Summit at the Marriott at Key Center in Cleveland with keynote speaker Harley Rouda Jr., CEO and managing partner of Real Living, offering the following:

“We have done a phenomenal job of screwing up our industry and creating bad headlines. We constantly devalue what we do day in and day out. It’s time to change our way of doing business.”

To that end, Rouda outlined 10 points of change for the industry as a whole to consider:

1. Start with the person in the mirror. Start with yourself and your firm that you’re going to take ethics and integrity in our profession to a higher level.

2. Know your fiduciary responsibilities. One of our greatest opportunities to connect with our customers is to talk about how we are like doctors and attorneys and other respected professions in that we have a higher duty and obligation to our customers.

3. Stop looking the other way. We all know what’s been going on in our industry. It is our job to stop looking the other way, to get involved and to help clean up our industry.

4. Look for red flags and report them.

5. Step out of the gray area.

6. Honesty — even if it is brutal honesty — to confront other members of our industry.

7. Transparency of information. Consumers still think it’s a great mystery in what we do. There’s got to be a way to make the transaction more transparent.

8. Push for industry change even if it hurts your bottom line. You cannot wait for the government. We are the police on the street.

9. Welcome government regulation. We don’t need more regulation, we need more accountability.

10. Take the long-term view. Think about implications beyond just the short-term. That view will cause us to make poor ethical decisions.