Maintaining an “arms length” distance from settlement service providers

A financial institution should be very cautious in situations like this and should question the reason why this would be requested in the first place. This could be perceived as providing a “thing of value” to a service provider when the third-party service provider should be obtaining this type of subscription on their own if it is a professional business need for their company. Regulators will frown on this and will question why this subscription is being shared/provided. There really should be no sound business reason to justify a business arrangement like this and always having a “arm’s length distance” should be a best practice to prevent the appearance of any impropriety regarding anything related to loan or mortgage servicing.