How should a title company verify payoff wire instructions?

Call the servicer back at a number already on the file, the monthly statement, the origination package, or the last known-good letter, never the number on the letter that just arrived. A named person at the agency must approve the wires before anyone posts the letter or sends money.

This is for the closer or processor at a 5-to-30-person title agency or attorney-closing firm on Qualia, SoftPro, ResWare or RamQuest who has a payoff letter in hand and has to send the wire.

A payoff statement, also called a payoff letter or payoff demand, is the servicer’s written figure for the amount that pays the loan in full as of a specified date. 12 CFR 1026.36(c)(3), read 2026-10-09, is the federal definition. How long a mortgage servicer has to send a payoff statement is that clock. The letter a closer wires from also carries a per diem, a good-through date, fees, and wiring instructions. Those extra lines are the ones a fraudster rewrites.

The letter is untrusted until the callback

ALTA Best Practices 5.0, effective 2026-10-08, read 2026-10-09, puts a written outgoing-wire procedure in Pillar 2. The procedure has to verify wire instructions independent of the initial communication, use multi-factor authentication, and look like ALTA’s Outgoing Wire Preparation Checklist (v2.0, 2019-08-19, read 2026-10-09). That checklist is the job: you call the payee at a phone number obtained independently from any number shown on the letter, the email, the fax, or a third-party package. Never the number included in an email.

The U.S. Secret Service, via ALTA on 2021-05-25, read 2026-10-09, warned that criminals impersonate lenders and send fictitious or altered mortgage payoff statements to title companies. Independently obtain the statement. Confirm it with a verified source. Do not rely on the mortgagor or another party on the file.

CertifID’s Q3 2026 Fraud Recovery Services report (published 2026-10-09, read 2026-10-09) is why the letter is the expensive document. Mortgage payoff fraud was 15.9% of accepted cases that quarter and $22.3 million of reported losses, more than half the $41 million on accepted cases, at $2.2 million per case. A fraudster impersonates the lender or servicer and sends a payoff statement with altered payment instructions. The payoff is often the largest single disbursement on the file.

What the named person confirms

Log the callback on the file in Qualia, SoftPro, ResWare or RamQuest. Ask the payoff desk to read the numbers. Do not read the letter to them and wait for a yes.

Field	What you confirm	Why it is on the call
Receiving bank name	Matches the servicer’s known bank, not a lookalike	A swapped bank is the usual rewrite
ABA routing number	Nine digits, read by the desk, matched to the letter	One digit is enough to divert the wire
Account number	Every digit, same way	Same
Beneficiary / account name	The servicer or its payoff account, not a person	A personal name on a first-lien payoff is a stop
Loan number on the wire memo	The loan on this file	A good wire to the wrong loan does not release this lien
Payoff amount and good-through date	Matches the letter you will fund from	A stale letter still needs a refresh, not a guessed per diem

ALTA’s checklist then wants two signatures: the wire creator and a separate wire authorizer. That is the named person. Do not post the letter or the wiring instructions into the production system until that person has signed.

Where the callback number comes from

Source	Use it	Skip it
Monthly borrower statement already on the file	Yes. Current servicer and its 1-800	A statement the borrower emailed this morning from an unknown address
Origination package or last known-good payoff letter	Yes, if the servicer has not changed	A servicing-transfer goodbye letter treated as the current 1-800
Servicer portal or fax the shop already uses for that lender	Yes	A new portal login that arrived with the letter
Shop list of validated wires for common bank payoffs	Yes, ALTA’s checklist allows a match to that list	A credit union, collection attorney, or new servicer that is not on the list
Number printed on the letter, email, or fax that just arrived	Never	That number can belong to the person who wrote it
Inbound call claiming to confirm the wires	Never. You place the call	An inbound “confirmation” is the other half of the attack

If servicing transferred, confirm who is on the monthly statement first. The new servicer owns the letter and the wires. What to do when the letter is still out is the chase. This page starts once the letter is in.

What fails

Move	Why it fails
Wire to the numbers printed on the letter that just arrived	The letter is the attack
Call the 1-800 printed on that same letter	The number can belong to the person who wrote it
Read the routing and account numbers to the desk and take a yes	Independent verification is them reading the numbers to you
Take an inbound call as the callback	ALTA’s rule is you obtain the number and you place the call
Post the PDF into Qualia, SoftPro, ResWare or RamQuest, then verify later	The next person on the file will treat posted wires as cleared
Treat a borrower-downloaded statement as verified	Same callback, same named person
Fund a HELOC payoff before the line is frozen	The borrower can still draw after you wire
Override a high-risk flag because Friday is funding	Hold the wire. Refresh the letter. Call again

Rules vary by state and by loan type. Check the underwriter’s bulletin and counsel. This is not legal advice.

Tools that verify, and where they stop

ALTA Best Practices 5.0 also says to use a wire-transfer verification service provider if it is available, efficient, and economical, and to vet it. Those tools win speed and, on their own pages, an insurance wrap. They do not replace the named person.

Tool	What its own page says it does	Where it stops
CertifID payoff verification (read 2026-10-09)	97% verification success rate, callbacks handled by them, up to $5 million in insurance on a CertifID-verified payoff	It is a vendor. A named person at the agency still approves posting the letter
Qualia Shield (read 2026-10-09)	Built into Qualia. Assesses payoff wire instructions for fraud risk. Eligible low-risk wires can carry up to $2 million in insurance backed by Lloyd’s of London	Qualia’s Banking Terms (last modified 2026-07-08, read 2026-10-09) say a “low risk” score is not a guarantee that fraud will not occur, and the agency is solely responsible for final approval in the bank’s system. Shield is Qualia-only
Shop list of validated payoff wires	ALTA’s checklist lets you match account and ABA to a list you already confirmed for common bank payoffs	A servicing transfer or a lender not on the list still needs a live callback

A SoftPro, ResWare or RamQuest shop cannot run Shield. Run the callback anyway. Do not treat a green score, a vendor PDF, or a list match as a substitute for the named person’s sign-off.

After the wire leaves

ALTA’s checklist has a third section: confirm delivery. Log the sent time, the amount, and who at the servicer confirmed receipt. If the funds have not posted in the window that servicer named, raise it the same day. ALTA’s Rapid Response Plan is the written procedure Pillar 2 wants tested at least annually. Call the sending bank, the receiving bank, and the servicer at numbers already on the file. Do not wait on an email that says the wire landed. If the good-through date will miss the contract date, flag the closer the same day and hold proceeds rather than guess a per diem off a stale letter.

Open the files that fund in the next ten days and still have an unapproved payoff letter. For each one, pull the callback number already on the file, run the callback, and have the named person sign the routing number, account number, and beneficiary before the letter is posted. Log the name, the number called, and the time on the file that afternoon.