Transforming title and lending workflows: GridBase’s Rhiannon Bolen on eliminating email and enhancing security

From fraud prevention to seamless system connection, GridBase stands out by being product, system, and channel agnostic, while transforming one of the most fragmented parts of the mortgage lending transaction. Rhiannon Bolen, SVP and National Sales Director at GridBase, speaks with Allison LaForgia about how the company is bridging critical gaps in the mortgage process. 

With deep industry expertise and a passion for digital transformation, Rhiannon explains what makes GridBase’s approach to title and lending so powerful. This conversation explores how GridBase works to mitigate fraud risk, improve speed and gain interoperability, all without being locked into rigid platforms. 

“I’ve been in the industry for about 25 years,” Bolen said. “I’ve always been very driven by helping my clients solve problems. And I’m genuinely interested in making workflows and interaction more collaborative and efficient.”

She noted that manual lender–title interactions are, surprisingly, still very common. “I don’t know that I even realized truly how manual the process was still between lender and title,” Bolen said. “So for me, it’s really exciting what GridBase is trying to do. We’re trying to solve for a problem here in the industry.”

According to Bolen, GridBase stands apart because of its flexibility. “We’re really the only solution of its kind that’s truly agnostic to the operating system, the product, or the channel. And it connects both sides of the equation, both lender and title,” she explained. “We set out to build this technology that accommodates both workflows and both systems. We’re kind of like an invisible and a visible connector between the two.”

The company’s most immediate impact has been reducing reliance on email. “The first and I think most major area that the GridBase technology accommodates for is just completely getting out of email altogether,” Bolen said. “I was very surprised after coming here that this part of the manufacturing process of originating and closing loans is still largely handled in email.”

She emphasized how moving collaboration into secure systems brings significant gains. “Even that little change to the workflow where we enable both parties, title and lender, to collaborate and communicate inside of their respective systems of record, even that alone is such a huge lift.”

Eliminating email also enhances security. “Conducting business in that way is inherently not secure,” Bolen said. “When you’re sending information back and forth outside of a secure system… you’re automatically going to increase the likelihood or the risk of fraud. So for us, that’s a really critical concern.”

Bolen also highlighted the system’s broad adaptability. “Because there are so many parts of the loan manufacturing process… GridBase is really unique because we can connect to any number of various systems of record that subsequently connect the lender to the title provider,” she explained. “We keep all of the parts of that inside of any platform used by the lender and the title provider on their system, and we connect those two.”

Looking ahead, GridBase has an ambitious roadmap. “We’re already solving for the problem of keeping the workflows in a secure environment,” Bolen said. “But we’ve got areas of consideration around enabling lenders to validate whether the title is clear from the time of the intent to proceed. We see a future around digitizing and balancing CDs. And we also see a potential for fully streamlining the entirety, the end-to-end title workflow from fee estimates to the title order to docs to e-signing.”

At the heart of GridBase’s mission is solving industry challenges. “This workflow is well overdue for modernization and it’s in desperate need of becoming more secure,” Bolen said. “It’s certainly, I would say, a bit of a paradigm shift for this part of the process… but I think at GridBase, we truly have a passion for making this whole experience better for all the parties involved.”