Frederick Eppinger: Yeah. So, John, to me, what’s interesting is we created this business, right? So, as you know, when we started in 2019-2020, we only had about $30 million in the services business. And unlike the big Fs, we didn’t have a portfolio of services. And we bought notarization capability, we bought appraisal capability, and we bought this kind of credit data capability. Okay? And those are the big pieces of what we’re talking about. And what’s interesting is when you assemble that, and what happens is, you have a single product with some of these partners. But now that we have it all together and we’re good counterparty, and you know how vendors care about having a good counterparty. We’re now the third alternative to these guys that’s a legit, significant company.
And so our ability to cross-sell those three kind of service categories with lenders is all fair game, right? And I would also say because of the little cyber events last year, it made lenders think about making sure that their shelf space was spread properly to protect themselves. And so all of that is kind of coming together for us to keep focused on trying to grow the business. Informative Research is a big chunk of what we’re talking about. It is both kind of a traditional tri-merge credit business, but it’s also, we created some, they’ve created some wonderful solutions to save the lenders money during the mortgage process, and we’ve had really good luck with adoption. So as I look forward, I see continued growth in that business, which is, say, it’s half of that business.
But I also see the others following suit, coming along with it as we cross-sell. Now, again, to your point, it’s a tough market. I mean, we all know what the mortgage market and the refi market is, and so it is down. But we are in a position of repositioning ourselves, if you will. So I’m very confident. The other thing you see, I think I’ve said this in a couple of calls, it’s sensitive. We needed to get more volume into the platform to help our margins. And you’ve seen that, too, right? It’s — we’re in a pretty good place, both cash margins and GAAP margins there now because we’ve kind of got to the critical mass, if you will, in some of those businesses. So I think we’re in a good spot. And I like it just because, again, our really well respected competitors all have that position, and we were the only one of the three that didn’t kind of didn’t have this portfolio.
And now I think we’re becoming highly respected in that area, and it’s important for us overall to have it, so.
John Campbell: Yeah, that’s great color. I appreciate that, Fred. And the Big Fs, I haven’t, I don’t know if I heard that term yet. That’s solid. So just kind of staying on that subject, you just mentioned that the cyber incidents did make some lenders kind of rethink that vendor diversification process. So I’m curious, are you seeing that also in the core title agency channel? Or are you hearing that from agents?
Frederick Eppinger: So that’s a great question, so people ask that. So traditionally in our business, not in the — lender always think about risk management, and they have multiple places. I just think with the lender space, we’re just more legit now. So it just gave us a reason to share a little bit. And I don’t think it’s we’re not talking about overwhelming volumes or anything, but to your point in agency, what’s interesting about our space is that it is, was less sensitive to risk management at the agent level than it should be. And there was way too many agents that gave most of their business to one of the underwriters, much more than you would see in PNC. And we had been talking about this stage — about the agents for three straight years because it doesn’t make sense to me, and it’s not everybody.
A lot of them do, a lot of them do, but a lot of them don’t. And what’s happened, in my view, is the amount of dialogue we’re having with agents now about giving what I would say is our fair share of their business, the better agents in the country because they want to just be a little bit safer. Third, a third or 50/50. But again, you’d be surprised how many agents were 80/20 or 100/0 given it’s just good business practice to be more balanced. And so we are unfairly advantaged to that shift because we’re the smallest of the group, right? So that shift is going to benefit us as long as we deliver and we focus on good execution, we should be able to do it. And what I’m seeing is that dialogue is thought. It takes time, it takes time. And by the way, because the market’s so low, it’s hard to share with a new partner when you don’t have a lot of — you have a lot of mouths to feed and you don’t have a lot of business.
So as the business grows, I think our momentum and share shift will increase, actually, because they’ll have more business and feel more comfortable with sharing more. So I just think that trend has got people thinking a tad more strategically. I think people overstate the impact in the short-term. I don’t think the impact of the short-term is that much at all. But the impact over the long-term could be somewhat material.
John Campbell: Okay, thanks for taking our questions and congrats on the continued success, guys.
Frederick Eppinger: Thanks.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] We’ll go next to Geoffrey Dunn with the Dowling Partners.
Frederick Eppinger: Good morning, Geoff.
Geoffrey Dunn: Hey, good morning. I was wondering if you could provide an update on your geographic targets right now for potential M&A. I know you’ve been focused on the Midwest, some South, Southwest and West Coast. Where are the — where’s that next tier of MSAs that you’re looking to build up scale? And in particular can you talk a little bit more about California and the effort to become more direct?
