ALTA survey review on commercial files, flagged item by item for your examiner.

Today a commercial examiner or title officer opens the plat next to the latest commitment and works through it. Does the description on the plat match Schedule A? Is every recorded easement on Schedule B shown or explained? What sits across a boundary, a setback line or an easement? Did the surveyor perform the Table A items the lender asked for, and certify to the right parties? Questions go back through your staff to the surveyor, and the answers shape what the policy says about survey matters.

In the proof of concept, AI takes the plat first and builds a cross-check of it against the commitment: each Schedule B matter with what the plat says about it, each condition the surveyor drew or tabulated near a line, each Table A item requested against the items named in the certificate, and each place the two documents disagree. Every entry points to a sheet and note on the plat or a line of the commitment. Nothing goes to a surveyor, a lender or an underwriter, and nothing is decided.

Start with the certificate, because it says what was actually surveyed and for whom. Under the 2026 ALTA/NSPS standards, the request has to name a 2026 ALTA/NSPS Land Title Survey and the optional Table A items wanted, and, unless local law requires otherwise, the plat carries only one unaltered certificate: addressed to the insured, the lender, the insurer and anyone else negotiated, listing the Table A items it includes, the date fieldwork was completed and the date of the plat. A new subsection lets the certificate run to the lender's successors and assigns when someone asks. So the draft sets the certified parties against the proposed insureds on Schedule A, and the certified Table A items against the lender's list, and flags a plat certified to the wrong entity or missing an item that was ordered.

Table A items change what the plat can tell you. Item 6 lets the surveyor list or draw zoning requirements only from a zoning report or letter the client provided, and ALTA's FAQ says that if an item stays in the certificate after its information never came, a note should explain what was and wasn't done. Item 11 combines client plans or a private utility locate with what was seen on the ground, under a printed warning that in some places 811 requests from surveyors may be ignored or answered only in part. Item 18 has the surveyor treat appurtenant offsite easements as if they were fee parcels, short of setting monuments on them. New in 2026, item 20 asks for a table of potential encroachments: over the boundary in either direction, into documented rights of way and easements, into setbacks only where the setback requirements were provided, and access or use across a neighbor's land with no documented easement. The draft records which items were requested and whether the plat delivered each one.

Easements need reading from both sides of the property line. ALTA's FAQ notes that easements benefiting the land are usually insured parcels on Schedule A while burdening ones are Schedule B, Part II exceptions, and that a commitment sometimes lists a beneficial one in Part II by mistake. If the surveyor finds a recorded easement the commitment doesn't list, the standards require telling the insurer before the plat is delivered and, unless the insurer shows it was terminated, drawing or explaining it with a note that the insurer was advised. The FAQ gives three usual reasons for the gap: the commitment missed it, the insurer knows it was released, or the insurer chose to insure over it. Only your examiner knows which, so each such note becomes a question in the draft, never an answer. Descriptions get the same care: where the record description differs from the one on Schedule A, the surveyor may need to show both, and a new description must say it covers the same land or explain how it differs, so the draft compares them call by call.

Some findings never appear in the public record. The standards ask the surveyor to locate walls, buildings, fences and other improvements within five feet of each side of the boundary and note where access to that strip was restricted, show projections such as eaves, bay windows, stoops and fire escapes that cross a line, disclose gaps or overlaps between parcels to the insurer and the client, and note any spoken statement an owner or occupant made about title or the boundary. None of these maps neatly onto a recorded document, so the draft lists each with its sheet and note, beside any Schedule B matter it might relate to, for your examiner to read.

Your reviewer will look hard at the stale survey. ALTA's FAQ says plainly that an update is a new survey, that one contracted after the 2026 standards took effect generally follows them, and that putting new certified parties on an old plat without new work is something else. So the draft checks the fieldwork date, the plat date and each revision date against the Commitment Date, and flags a certificate that still cites the 2021 standards on a recent order. The 2026 standards also stopped requiring the insurer to furnish adjoining deeds, so the draft notes which adjoining properties the plat identifies by recording data or tax parcel number. What any of it means for coverage is your examiner's decision.

If your reviewer says yes, new commercial files get the cross-check for about 30 days, ready when each survey or revision comes in.

Your examiner reads every cross-check and decides what it means: which questions go to the surveyor, what the policy says about survey matters, and whether anything goes to your underwriter. The AI never decides whether a survey shows a problem, never decides an exception or orders an endorsement, never handles funds or wire instructions, and never contacts a buyer, seller, lender, surveyor or underwriter.

Your reviewer grades the live cross-checks on the same written criteria the test used.