Has TitleWizard cast a spell on California regulators?

Can a Web site solve the problems California regulators have with an alleged lack of competition in the title insurance industry?

That's a question posed on this blog back in May, when California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, addressing the state's title insurance industry at their annual convention in San Francisco, mentioned TitleWizard, a Web site that promised to allow consumers to shop for title insurance, as the kind of step he'd like to see the industry taking to increase consumer choice.

Poizner's predecessor, you may recall, claimed there was a lack of competition in the state's title insurance business, and proposed rolling title insurance rates back by $1 billion a year. Poizner is a pro business Silicon Valley entrepreneur who has nevertheless been outspoken about his views that title insurers have, in fact, marketed their product to the people who can refer business to them -- realtors, lenders and builders -- instead of consumers.

But Poizner, saying he wants to give the title insurance industry time to reform itself, has rolled back plans to implement the rate cuts proposed by his predecessor until 2011. So what will the industry do to reform itself?

A few minutes ago, Poizner's office sent out a press release alerting the news media of a "major announcement on title insurance rates." Tuesday in Sacramento, the press release said:

"California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and the California Land Title Association will announce TitleWizard, a first-in-the-nation searchable website that will enable consumers to review title insurance rates from nearly 100 companies when buying, selling or refinancing their homes. TitleWizard also offers a consumer education section to help guide users through the real estate closing process."

Wow -- guess Poizner was impressed. The video above is an an overview of the TitleWizard site ClosingCorp CEO Anthony Farwell gave Inman News in May.

If TitleWizard is to be the first searchable title insurance search site in the nation (anybody know otherwise?), sites like Get Title Insurance and EasyTitleQuote.com already provide rate quotes, and there's also Colorado-based myTitleIns.com.

Guess we'll have to wait until Tuesday to see if there's more to this "major announcement"  on title insurance rates than TitleWizard.

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