Then and Now: Curry making title industry more efficient at Allegiance

Long before launching Allegiance Title Co., Patrick Curry was already rethinking how the title industry could work better. Now he’s putting that vision into practice at Allegiance by building a company centered on technology, efficiency and relationships.

A Colorado native, Curry earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from Colorado State University and his master’s degree in taxation from the University of Denver.

A job as accounting controller with Waco Title Co. brought him to Arkansas in 2005 where he spent 15 years, moving to chief operating officer and then to president and CEO for almost nine years. The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal named him to the Forty Under 40 class in 2010.

In 2021, he and partner Brian Blackman opened Allegiance Title, which is a full-service, independent title insurance company licensed in Arkansas and Missouri and offers residential, commercial and lender services. With 35 employees, it has offices in Fayetteville, Rogers and Farmington.

The company has grown 50% year over year since its inception, and Curry intends to continue “to grow through service, great products and providing value to customers.”

Curry started Allegiance because he wanted “to automate and utilize technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), and have more control over the business process,” he said. “I’d never been in that role before. So, I guess the ultimate goal was to start a company where we could roll out the vision, the ideas and our growth plans. And, if we were successful, it was all due to our own making.”

That means choosing “to create over comfort,” Curry said. “We talk a lot about how you can be comfortable in another role or at another company, but anyone that wants to be comfortable isn’t probably in the right spot because we choose creators, people that are wanting to build and challenge themselves to grow.”

Curry and his team have created an automated way to enter real estate records into a database and have digitized millions of documents for their clients, making the title process easier and more efficient. “We’ve cut the price on that dramatically and done it through the use of technology and AI,” Curry said. “I’ve worked on it since 2019. Some people work on their cars on the weekend; I work on databases.”

They’ve had success with AI “because we’ve put some heavy guardrails around AI, and so it only makes a very few decisions for us right now,” he said. “But it saves a ton of time. I’m not scared of it, and I don’t think our people should be either, because it allows our people to do harder work and more rewarding work and takes the boring stuff away that no one actually wants to do.

“AI will impact (the industry) a lot over the next few years, but on the other side of that, it’s still a very human industry. We’re solving very human problems, and people expect to have human interactions. We believe in relationships. I brag on my team. Our single biggest source of success is hiring great individuals that have strong relationships in the community, and we just help make them successful and try to make it a place they want to work.”

Curry is proud of his company’s culture and often tells his people,

“Feedback is a gift.” In other words, “we don’t want anyone to ever be afraid to get feedback either way: Good or bad, it’s always a gift,” he said. Another favorite is “Get stuff done, or G.S.T.,” meaning “we try not to say no, but we find an answer.”

When asked what advice he gives to others, Curry said, “Work hard, learn everything you possibly can about the business you’re in and figure things out. It’s that mindset of just grinding through and figuring it out. There’s not a whole lot of overnight successes. Overnight success usually takes about 20 years and a lot of time and investment.”

Curry is a past member of the Saving Grace board, supports Hope Cancer Resources and serves on First National Bank’s advisory board. Proud of wife, Sarah, and their four kids, Curry enjoys golf and coaching his kids’ sports.