Andy White, Founder and CEO of Closinglock, shares what it means to hit the latest milestone in the company’s mission to power and protect real estate transactions in the U.S.
Today, we announced a $34 million Series B funding round. That’s huge—not just in number, although, of course, it is huge, but also in what this means for the real estate industry. This latest milestone is tremendous validation of everything we’ve been building at Closinglock in our mission to power and protect real estate transactions in the U.S.
Our Why
Hitting milestones like this reminds me why we do what we do. Closinglock was founded in 2018 to solve an immediate and evolving problem: preventing wire fraud in real estate transactions. But what began as the secure exchange of data has since expanded into a software platform for communications, verifications, and payments built for the needs of every step of the real estate transaction.
The unsung heroes of real estate
Our customers are the thousands of title agents and attorneys working behind the scenes of every real estate transaction. They are the settlement industry’s unsung heroes, facing the challenges, intricacies, and risks of the $2 trillion worth of U.S. home purchases and sales every year.
Few know the full extent of what title and settlement companies do, but almost every single person who has bought or sold a home in the U.S. has relied on their work to ensure full ownership is transferred without legal issues, to confirm the seller’s right to sell, to provide title insurance to protect against hidden claims, and to handle the closing process to ensure a smooth, secure transaction.
It is a massive undertaking. The stakes are incredibly high. And the threats are constantly evolving.
But an evolving threat in a constantly evolving industry requires evolving strategies. That’s where Closinglock comes in. The trust of our customers fuels our drive to keep building the products that make their lives easier and keeps real estate transactions safe.
How it started
My lightbulb moment occurred following a conversation with my wife, Abby, in 2017. At the time, Abby was the Marketing Director at a real estate company, and one of their homebuyers had almost lost their life savings to fraudsters in an email spoof. An email spoof? It seemed like such a frighteningly simple way for a fraudster to steal a massive amount of money. It couldn’t happen to me.
Or could it?
It got me thinking about our own home purchase one year prior, and I realized that I had driven to our bank and instructed them to wire our entire life savings to an account number I had received—in an email. It was not a huge leap to imagine that that could have been a fraudulent email, and I could have instructed our bank to send the money directly to the fraudsters.
I did not—mercifully—lose our life savings. But the realization was enough to make me question the whole system. It was too close to home, figuratively and literally. We were lucky we were not targeted. And I believe strongly that people’s life savings should never be left down to luck, especially as the risks become more prevalent.
Questioning the system
From a high level, it begs the question of why we are dealing with wire information to begin with. Why are we sending our life savings to a nameless account and routing number? It seems like a pretty crazy system, when you think about it. And we’ve thought about it. A lot.
But there is an obvious solution! Instead of passing around wiring instructions, we can just link bank accounts together in a system that pulls the money from one account directly into another. No emails to be sent—or spoofed. No phone calls. No checks. No trips to the bank.
So that’s one of the things we built. Our Good Funds Payments tool is just one of multiple tools we offer within one secure platform where settlement companies, real estate agents, buyers and sellers can securely exchange funds, documents, and communications.
Historically, there has been insufficient investment in addressing this problem, so many sales are still conducted as they have been for almost 50 years—over insecure emails, risky wire transfers, and a piecemeal collection of other tools and technologies. Fraudsters know this and are attacking from every angle, stealing the life savings of homebuyers and taking billions out of the real estate industry.
It has to stop.
When a system is so established, it’s hard to step back and think about how it could be different. But that’s exactly what we have done and will continue to do at Closinglock. We’re redefining and simplifying real estate transactions to make them safer, more efficient, and bring them into the digital age.
This is only the beginning in our mission to power and protect every real estate transaction in the U.S.
Where we’re going
While I will take every opportunity I can to beat the drum for the vital work of settlement companies, I know that actions speak louder than words. And this funding will supercharge that action.
We’ve got work to do. And we need more people to join us in building a world where every real estate transaction is convenient, secure, and trusted beyond reproach. If it sounds lofty, that’s because it is, but we’re not going to let it stop us.
Building that reality requires both the best technology and a deep understanding of the industry, and that is what Closinglock will always represent.
I am immensely grateful to everyone who has been part of our journey so far—from our incredible team to the investors and strategic partners who have believed in us, and, of course, the heroes of this story—our customers. We couldn’t be taking this next step without them, and together, we’re proving what’s possible when innovation meets purpose.
We are rapidly growing our team in Austin and investing heavily in research and development to ensure we are always offering the title and settlement industry the best-in-class service that every transaction deserves. Because it’s more than a transaction to us.
Andy
To learn more about Closinglock and our vision for the future of the real estate industry, join Sushma Zoellner (our Chief Product Officer) and me at our webinar, “Series B & Beyond: Reshaping Real Estate Transactions” on Thursday, February 6, at 2 p.m. CST. We’ll discuss how the real estate landscape has evolved and give a sneak peek into some of the ways we see upcoming changes impacting the solutions we’re building to solve those problems. Register here.