Worth National Title Insurance Co.’s origin story is “really no different” than others in the underwriting industry, according to its CEO and President George Stablein.
The founder and owner of the Fort Worth-Texas-based underwriting business is Scott McKnight, who owns McKnight Title, a title agency in Texas.
Stablein explained that McKnight is “a large agent who decided it was time to start an underwriter to not only capture their own business but to also bring independent agents to our family of agents.”
Stablein and Norma Scott, executive vice president and agency director for Worth National Title, spoke with The Title Report about how the business got started, why it was initiated, the challenges they’re facing, and their future plans.
How it started
Stablein and Scott are veterans of the industry: Stablein has worked in underwriting for 27 years, while Scott has spent 28 years in a career that started with an agency in rural Texas. She became an escrow officer and then a regional manager for a large underwriter. The two have a professional history: Scott was one of Stablein’s agents at First American in the late 1990s. After Stablein moved on to another opportunity, Scott said they kept in touch and eventually re-connected to work together in 2021.
“We were looking for an agency rep where I was [working],” Stablein said. “I called Norma, and it was the perfect time. She excelled in that role the day she started.”
Stablein said he then spoke with McKnight a little more than a year ago, and that led to the Worth National Title venture.
Getting the underwriting business launched was a lengthy process. One large step was securing a license through the state of Texas.
The Texas Department of Insurance is “pretty strict about their guidelines on what is necessary to start an underwriter,” Scott said. “Fortunately, we connected with an attorney that held our hand through it all and it was a lot of information, but we became officially licensed and got our certificate of authority on May 14, 2024.”
That process included a review of McKnight’s and Stablein’s background in the title business.
“When [the state of Texas] blessed us and said, ‘congratulations, you guys are actually an underwriter,’ it was really nice,” Stablein said. “…For eight months, we’ve been writing premiums, and had a couple claims.”
McKnight Title is an affiliate of Worth National Title. This arrangement, according to Scott, was helpful in establishing the new underwriting business.
“I think one of the good things… was having McKnight Title as our affiliate agent and being able to work with them and go through the process, making sure we’re doing everything correctly before we were able to on-board our first independent agent,” Scott said.
While McKnight is an affiliate agent of Worth National Title, Stablein and Scott both emphasized that McKnight and Worth function separately.
Stablein credited Scott McKnight for allowing this arrangement to occur.
“To Scott’s credit, some people in our industry don’t have that sort of comfort level,” Stablein said. “Or they’re not as comfortable in their own skin, whereas Scott McKnight’s probably the most comfortable in his skin I’ve ever seen and he’s just like, ‘Well, let’s just separate the two and go from there.”
Their role in the company
Scott and Stablein each discussed their colleague’s role with the company.
Scott said Stablein’s job is to “keep those connections with our agents, keep everybody happy within our team and motivating us to be better…He is amazing because we’re all family.”
Stablein said Scott supervises the agents in Texas.
“[Scott is] truly the arm that runs the agency side…[she] is in charge of all the agents, including McKnight, to make sure that their day-to-day interaction with Worth is positive, productive and fruitful,” Stablein said. “She’s also in charge of the growth, as far as the addition of the agents… Without her, we couldn’t do anything. When you look at the agency director role, she is the line of contact.”
Stablein noted Scott’s expertise is in the escrow side of the business and added she will often spend a lengthy amount of time with clients to help them resolve their problems.
“She’s truly a resource,” Stablein said. “…We’re very blessed to have her.”
So far, Worth National Title has signed up 11 independent agents that were already known by Stablein or Scott. These are agents that they’ve developed relationships with during the past 25 years.
The next step, Stablein said, “is to meet new friends.”
“I think the next stage of our friends may come from referrals from the friends that we already trust,” Scott said.
Since this is a people-first business, growing relationships and fostering new ones is essential, according to Stablein.
“If you stick to the same people, you want to keep them, but you also have to grow, and one of the things we’ve had over here is the ability to meet new people who are new to the industry, who are where we were 25 years ago … I find that to be super-exciting,” he explained.
How they’re handling challenges
Stablein ticked off a list of challenges that he anticipated when this new venture was undertaken and also noted that heading down the path involves a “leap of faith.”
“I knew there would be trials and tribulation,” Stablein said… “But I knew that we had amazing people, so whatever the challenge was, we would achieve it… We were humble enough to hope that our friends from other companies would sign up with us. That's a leap of faith to move business to a brand new company. That’s a heck of an ask. It’s great loyalty.”
Scott added that she knew there would be challenges but they’d been resolved so far through both her own problem-solving skills and the help of other resources.
“We are aware of the areas that we are not good at,” she said. “That’s when we reach out to seasoned professionals to get us through those times.”
Looking ahead
Worth National Title officials recently finished setting up a system that will integrate any agent to their software platform. This move, Stablein said, is “exciting because once we get that, that’s one of the last barriers to a full show of our efforts from a monetary standpoint.”
Scott said the venture has been a “methodical” process. They’ve gone through the steps of setting up the relationship with McKnight, the arrangement with the independent agents, and then integrating those agents to their software platform.
Stablein praised McKnight for his commitment to a venture that gives company leaders the ability to pick and choose the agents they want to bring on-board.
“The last thing you want to do is go too big and then have to contract,” Stablein said. “I don't really want to contract to the point where I would lose people.”
At the moment, Stablein said company leaders are focused on growing the business in Texas. Worth agents can be found in cities such as San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Amarillo, Lubbock, El Paso, and along the border.
Scott said they’re focused on “making a footprint across Texas and then we can start going outward to those extra states.”
Eventually, Worth leaders are interested in expanding to Arizona, Oklahoma and possibly New Mexico.
Scott said they want to grow but they “want to keep it manageable…We want to keep it just where it flows well … and that we are still able to get out there and give those personal touches, give them the service level that we’ve had from the very beginning.”