Delivering World-Class Mortgage and Notary Documentation Services Using Machine Intelligence: NoteBoT

“Our technology makes the process of organizing forms, capturing signatures, and reviewing or correcting errors faster and easier. We make the life of a notary far easier.”

Whether it’s a consumer wanting to get insurance paperwork attested or a business looking to properly process signatures, when the need for document notarization arises, it’s often urgent — a need that must be fulfilled quickly. Despite major advancements in technology, however, the notarization process continues to be slow and outdated. It still involves finding a local notary service provider, printing out physical copies, racing to make an in-person appearance, and using a rubber stamp to seal the deal. It’s a time-consuming process, to say the least. This is where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning play a crucial role. The capacity of Machine Learning algorithms to work better with more data gives AI the power of making another fundamental shift in the document management world. Unlike traditional data processing systems which are bound to constantly follow the same logic, AI systems get smarter as more data is given to them.

NoteBoT is one such firm that is well-versed in a variety of operating systems, networks, and databases. The company uses this expertise to help its customers with a variety of small to mid-sized projects. NoteBoT’s system identifies where the form needs to be completed and uses AI as a tool to make automated digital sticky notes instead of using paper ‘sticky notes’.

The company mainly focuses on mortgage and notary documentation.

Mark Singleton: Interview Highlights

Q. Please brief us about your products and services.

We aim to take standardized forms and use machine intelligence to fill them out correctly. Most preprinted forms need human interaction, signatures, initials, dates, all need to be supplied — our system identifies where the form needs to be completed. We replace paper ‘sticky notes’ that notary might use to automated digital sticky notes. Large organizations typically invest a great deal of money training people to ensure documents get completed correctly but NoteBoT technology is able to highlight and review documents automatically.

Q. What types of forms you mainly focus on?

We like especially high-end transactions that are typically very complex. Mortgage documentation is our initial focus and if you have ever done a mortgage closing, you know what I mean. There are lots of forms that require signing, dating, and making selections with some forms requiring notarizing. All 50 States require using notary’s to complete a mortgage and most do an amazing job of it. Our technology makes the process of organizing forms, capturing signatures, and reviewing or correcting errors faster and easier. NoteBoT makes the life of a notary far easier.

There are more than four and a half million notaries in the country, all needing to check and recheck their work for mistakes. This is kind of a double-check that makes sure the documents are done correctly the first time. I call that ‘AI perfect’. NoteBoT uses machine intelligence to learn from good and bad examples. This is like using facial recognition to tell the difference between dogs and cats. You feed as many dog, cat, and bird pictures as you can find into a deep learning system. Eventually, enough examples are analyzed to identify the animal type. Documents work the same way, with enough sample data you can teach a system to identify documents and ensure they are completed correctly.

Q. How would someone use NoteBoT? How does it work?

Let’s use mortgage again as an example. When you decide to buy a house the lender has house appraised after analyzing your creditworthiness. Our technology doesn’t change that but at some point, both the lender and the title insurance company prepare all the forms for you to sign, typically PDFs.  Instead of emailing documents to be printed they get sent to NoteBoT servers first to add both tamper-proof encryption and digital version of sticky notes. Forms are printed and signed as usual then original and copies routed off to respective parties including copy for you.

Forms can vary quite a bit even in the same State. Depending on the type of loan – is it a VA or FHA loan, are there special compliance rules, what type of property is it, etc. It is those many differences that create so many different forms just to complete a mortgage — over 100 thousand different forms in the US with only 30 to 50 needing to be signed in the average mortgage. Sign this one on the 3rd page, that one on the last page, and have someone witness your signature on 10 different pages — but which pages? That’s where NoteBoT comes, and when used with a professional notary, you get a perfect set of documents.

Q. You recently changed from Coin Closing to NoteBoT. Why the new name?  

That is a great question! I have been fortunate to build several successful companies using the name COIN as part of its name for decades. One reason for the change is because everyone thinks we are in the Bitcoin business. Now, we are dealing with notaries, digital documents, and AI. The term ‘bot’ in technology has grown to mean software that operates with minimal human intervention. There are all kinds of places that ‘bot’ technology is being used in the financial service industry but we believe are one of the first companies to apply the term to identifying and completing standardized forms error-free. With high-end transactions worth many thousands of dollars then you want to make sure that T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted, and that is exactly what we do.     

Q. How do you commercialize your services?

Among NoteBoT’s commercialization efforts are building strategic relationships with high profile organizations that have great reputations with a large number of financial institutions. One technology we think shows great promise is called remote online notarization or RON’s. Twenty states are allowing mortgages to be closed almost anywhere convenient. For example, signing documents in your home instead of having to go to a lawyer’s office or a settlement agent. Adoption challenges remain, including legal requirements in many states to sign documents using ‘wet ink’ signatures. For now, NoteBoT is the only technology that can simultaneously capture both wet-ink signatures and digital with minimal organizational impact.  

Q. What are your trajectories for the next five years?

We have been working on building the NoteBoT solution for a little over two years and starting pilots now.  It seems to be working well with no super surprises so far, so we plan on being in all fifty states by this year.

The ultimate goal is to apply the NoteBoT solution to any type of financial transaction. When you look at the financial services industry, they do repetitive transactions using mountains of paper printed on high- speed printers and is time-consuming. Whether institutions use NoteBoT technology or not, there is a lot of exciting developments going on using big data and machine intelligence to increase productivity to offset ever-increasing labor costs. We hope using NoteBoT technology allows the average employee to do a higher quality job without retraining. 

The Ardent Visionary Behind the Success of NoteBoT: Mark Singleton

Mark Singleton serves as the Chief Executive Officer of NoteBoT. He is a serial entrepreneur recognized for creating multiple best-in-class technology companies. Mr. Singleton holds numerous patents and is currently serving as a director at a technical college.

“For now, NoteBoT is the only technology that can simultaneously capture both wet-ink signatures and digital with minimal organizational impact.”