The NAIFA-supported SECURE Notarization Act was filed with Rules as an amendment (AMDT #543) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on July 8 by Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA), Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), and Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX).

NAIFA joined with industry partners in a letter to express strong support for NDAA amendment #543. The text of the amendment is taken from H.R. 3962, the SECURE Notarization Act, which has the strong, bipartisan support of 113 cosponsors. 

The amendment provides all Americans additional flexibilities and options for executing critical life documents, including for real estate transactions, wills, and health care directives using remote online notarization (RON).  

The last few years have demonstrated how technology can be leveraged to modernize services across a variety of markets. Notarizations are widely used for real estate, financial services, and other legal documents. Remote Online Notarization (RON) allows the consumer, notary and other parties to a transaction to be in different locations using two-way audio-visual communication to securely notarize documents. This process provides assured consumer access to notarization, allows for flexible scheduling, and affords consumers time to review documents and proceed when they are ready to sign.

The amendment has good prospects to be adopted in the House version of NDAA but could again face difficulty from members of the California delegation in either the House or Senate due to concern of implementation in California by the California state government. Last year, although included as an amendment in NDAA, SECURE Notarization was stripped out of the bill before passage.