Research has found most people who communicate in acronyms may confuse the people with whom they are communicating. It is confusing! While title professionals may fully understand the acronyms, their customers, people outside the industry, may not.

Take for instance the Closing Disclosure. The industry calls it a CD, but do you think for a minute the consumer knows what a CD might be? They likely think the person communicating with them wants to send them a compact music disc or a disc containing their closing documents.

The Fidelity Family of Companies encourages its associates not to utilize acronyms when communicating with customers; one example is TRID which stands for TILA–RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule.

TRID is an acronym made up of an acronym one industry professional mentioned and it caught on. It truly makes no sense to use the acronym TRID in any context, but certainly not to describe the closing disclosure form or the disclosure of title premiums on the form.

Another acronym is CFPB. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is an agency of the United States government responsible for protecting the consumer with regard to their financial decisions.

However, CFPB is used throughout the real estate industry to call out mortgage disclosure forms and to refer to the consumer finance law. It is neither. The CFPB is not a form, it is not a rule. It is an agency comprised of living beings.

I once sat through an entire presentation with hundreds of other audience members where the panel of speakers used the acronym CID throughout the presentation. I had no idea what CID meant and did not want to ask, in case everyone else in the room already knew what it meant. The presentation went on for an hour and I did not understand the heart of the message.

Afterward, I asked several other attendees what the acronym stood for…not one of them knew. I later researched the acronym and discovered it meant Civil Investigative Demand. The presentation would have been a lot more meaningful had I understood the title company owner who was speaking was talking about how the demand is served and its terms are met.

Being the best in the industry means we have to continue to treat our customers with the utmost respect and professionalism, one of the best ways to do that is to explain things to your customers using complete words and sentences when in the communication with them, both in writing and verbally.