First American Exchange, IPX1031, Asset Preservation Compared

Who owns the 1031 exchange companies people search

A qualified intermediary (QI) holds the cash from your sale for up to 180 days. What the law requires of one, which is very little, and the eight state statutes that add bonds and licenses, are in our guide to the 1031 qualified intermediary rules. This page is about the companies themselves. The premise we started from, that the best-known QIs belong to listed title insurers, holds for three of the three most-searched names, and the parents' annual reports are the only audited documents that say anything about them.

Two things the table settles. Is IPX part of Fidelity? Yes. FNF's annual report for 2009 says that in February 2009 it transferred its stake in FNRES Holdings to Lender Processing Services “in exchange for all of the outstanding shares of Investment Property Exchange Services, Inc.”, and an IPX press release of September 11, 2025 calls IPX1031 “a wholly owned subsidiary of Fidelity National Financial (NYSE:FNF)”. FNF's current Exhibit 21 lists only its significant subsidiaries, so IPX does not appear there. Who owns Asset Preservation? Stewart, which lists it as a California subsidiary in its Exhibit 21.1 for December 31, 2025.

How much exchange money each parent reports

Exchange funds are kept off the parents' balance sheets because, as First American puts it, “the proceeds and property are not considered assets of the Company due to the structure utilized to facilitate these transactions.” The amounts still appear in the notes, each parent in its own way.

Source: 10-K and 10-Q filings of each company (accessions in the dataset). FNF reports an average for the year, the others a point-in-time figure, so the columns are not directly comparable. Old Republic does not report exchange balances; its 10-K gives $34.2 million of 2025 revenue for exchange services and electronic recording combined.

Two patterns stand out. The balances follow the deal cycle: First American's doubled from $2.9 billion to $6.0 billion in 2021 and fell to $1.8 billion by 2023; Stewart's went from about $2.5 billion to $770.1 million over the same two years. And the scale differs by an order of magnitude: Investors Title's whole exchange book at June 30, 2026 ($329.1 million) is smaller than the slice First American had moved into its own bank by the same date ($833.5 million).

Where your money sits, and who answers for it

None of the five 10-Ks we read describes a written guarantee from the parent to exchangers. What they say instead:

• First American: deposits at third-party banks are “placed in deposit accounts insured, up to applicable limits, by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation”, and the group “could be held contingently liable to the customer for the transfers of property, disbursements of proceeds and the returns on such proceeds.” Since 2025 part of the money sits at First American Trust, FSB, a federal savings bank with $6.2 billion of deposits and $510 million of equity at December 31, 2025. Its risk factors add that if a bank holding such deposits fails, “there is no guarantee that the Company would recover the funds deposited”. Deposit insurance has a per-depositor limit, so on a seven-figure exchange most of the balance is above it.
• Stewart: its qualified intermediary “holds the proceeds from these transactions until a qualifying exchange can occur”, which Stewart reports as a contingent liability of about $1.2 billion at December 31, 2025. Asset Preservation's own website goes further: “Upon request, Stewart issues a Letter of Assurance (LOA) to each of API’s exchange customers.” It says the coverage “is not limited to a specific dollar amount like a bond or Errors & Omissions coverage.” That is the company's claim as of October 9, 2026; ask for the letter in writing.
• Investors Title: the deposits “are held at third-party financial institutions”, are “primarily invested in money market funds and other short-term investments”, and the company “remains contingently liable for the disposition of the transfers of property, disbursements of proceeds and the return on the proceeds at the agreed upon rate.”
• FNF (IPX1031): the 10-K describes the funds as “customer funds in escrow (off-balance sheet)” and gives no statement on liability or account type specific to IPX. IPX's press release says it “provides industry leading security for exchange funds” without saying how.
• Old Republic: nothing specific to exchange funds in the 10-K.

State law can add a bond, insurance or a license depending on where your property is. Investors Title's 10-K states the general position plainly: “Exchange services are not a regulated industry”. The state table is in our qualified intermediary guide.

Who keeps the interest

This is the number the parents publish and the QIs' marketing does not. FNF's 10-K says its net investment income “includes fees earned by holding customer funds in escrow (off-balance sheet) during facilitation of tax-deferred property exchanges.”

Source: FNF Forms 10-K for 2023 (0001331875-24-000019) and 2025 (0001331875-26-000026). The same 10-Ks show a separate line, “Tax deferred property exchange income”, of $122 million for 2025 and $166 million for 2023; the filing does not reconcile the two measures. For the first six months of 2026 that line was $58 million, the same as a year earlier.

At 3.8% a year, $1,000,000 left with a QI for the full 180 days would earn about $18,600 (our arithmetic). Who gets that is a contract term; our QI guide explains how the tax rules treat earnings paid to you or kept by the QI. The other filers say the same thing in fewer numbers. Investors Title's exchange income is derived “from fees for handling exchange transactions and a portion of the interest earned on client deposits held by the Company”, and its exchange segment earned $11.2 million before tax on $14.0 million of revenue in 2025 (our rounding). Exeter 1031, an independent, says on its fee page that “Qualified intermediaries retain all or a portion of the interest income earned on your tax-deferred exchange funds while they are held by the qualified intermediary as part of their compensation.” Ask any QI, in writing, what rate you will receive.

2008: what Asset Preservation's record shows

The year that tested QIs was 2008, when auction rate securities stopped trading. Our QI guide covers the company that failed, LandAmerica 1031 Exchange Services. Stewart's filings show a QI holding the same kind of paper that did not.

At June 30, 2008, Stewart's exchanger funds held $355.0 million of auction rate securities. On September 30, 2008, Asset Preservation and UBS Bank USA signed a $241,525,000 credit line, a demand loan secured by the securities at 100% of par; $199,325,000 was drawn that day and $42,200,000 on October 1. In the 8-K's words, “The line of credit was used by API to purchase auction rate securities from the exchanger fund account at full par value”, and “The Company has guaranteed performance by API under the loan facility.” The draw gave the exchanger funds $79.8 million of liquidity, and the balance of auction rate securities left in them fell to $121.4 million, then $101.0 million after October redemptions. Stewart's exchanger-fund liability fell from $763.9 million at December 31, 2007 to $262.7 million at September 30, 2008 as exchanges closed. On June 30, 2010 Stewart handed the securities to the bank at par and the line was extinguished.

FNF also carries a piece of that history. It bought LandAmerica's two principal title insurance underwriters on December 22, 2008, and in November 2010 a purported class of LES exchangers sued two of them, alleging they knew of LES's problems and recommended it anyway (the Hays action). FNF said it had strong defenses; its 10-K for 2011 reports that the LES liquidation trust put total losses above $300 million, of which more than $200 million had already been paid to claimants. The allegations were against the title insurers, not IPX, and later FNF filings we read do not report an outcome.

The independents: what we can and cannot check

Exeter 1031, Legal 1031 and Accruit file nothing with the SEC that we found, so there is no audited figure to compare. What Exeter and Legal 1031 say, read on October 9, 2026:

• Legal 1031 Exchange Services says exchange accounts are “protected by a $50 million Fidelity Bond and a $100 million errors and omissions policy”, and that funds are held in “segregated money market escrow accounts, identified with the client’s name and taxpayer identification number”.
• Exeter 1031 says it holds funds in “separate, segregated, dual-signature qualified trust accounts with Exeter Trust Company at no additional cost.”

A bond is one total for all of a QI's clients, not per client, and it pays only for the losses it covers. Compare it with the balances above: a $50 million bond against a book the size of Investors Title's ($329.1 million) or First American's ($2.8 billion) covers a fraction.

Fees: what is published

We could not save a fee schedule for First American Exchange, IPX1031 or Asset Preservation; their sites either blocked automated reading or did not show one. The one dated schedule we saved is Exeter's description of the market, which is its claim:

If set-up fees are a fifth to a quarter of a QI's revenue, most of the rest is the interest on clients' money, which is consistent with what FNF reports (our reading). On a large exchange the interest split can be worth far more than the set-up fee.

The comparison, cell by cell

Sources: the 10-K and 10-Q filings listed in the dataset, and the API and IPX statements read October 9, 2026. Not covered here means we did not read that company's 2008 filings for this page.

What the records let you compare, and what they do not

The filings do not rank these companies, and we do not either. They answer narrower questions. Each of the five is a subsidiary of a listed insurer that reports to the SEC, so its parent's balance sheet, auditor and disclosures are public, which no independent QI offers. The size of the books differs widely, from about $0.3 billion to several billion. The parents earn a meaningful return on the float: FNF's figures put it near 4% of balances in 2023-2025. And the only written parent backing we found offered to clients is Asset Preservation's Letter of Assurance, which you have to request. Everything else that protects you is in your own exchange agreement: the account it names, who signs withdrawals, what the cash is invested in and what rate you are paid.

What a seller can do with this

• Choose the QI before you close, so the sale contract can be assigned to it; the 45-day and 180-day clocks start at closing, as our year-end 1031 timeline explains.
• Ask for the account in writing: a separate account in your name and taxpayer number, or a qualified escrow or trust, and whether withdrawals need your signature. If the QI uses an affiliated bank, as First American now does for part of its book, ask which bank holds yours.
• Ask what rate you will be paid, and compare it with what the parent earns. FNF's own figures imply about 3.8% in 2025 (our arithmetic).
• If you use Asset Preservation, request Stewart's Letter of Assurance, which its website says is available on request. From any other QI, ask whether the parent will put anything in writing.
• Compare bond and E&O certificates with the QI's total book, not with your own balance, and check your state's rules in our qualified intermediary guide.
• If the replacement is a DST, the QI wires your funds to the sponsor; what the DST itself charges is in our analysis of DST Form D filings. For buy-first deals, see our reverse 1031 exchange guide.

This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on October 9, 2026: SEC EDGAR filings of First American Financial (Forms 10-K 0001564590-22-005550, 0000950170-24-017418 and 0001193125-26-055516 with Exhibit 21; Form 10-Q 0001193125-26-314255), Fidelity National Financial (Forms 10-K 0000950123-10-019326, 0001331875-12-000018, 0001331875-22-000024, 0001331875-24-000019 and 0001331875-26-000026 with Exhibit 21.1; Form 10-K/A 0001104659-22-054079; Form 10-Q 0001331875-26-000073), Stewart Information Services (Form 8-K 0000950129-08-005083; Form 10-Q 0000950129-08-005481; Forms 10-K 0000950123-11-021783, 0000094344-22-000006, 0000094344-23-000005, 0000094344-24-000005, 0000094344-25-000004 and 0000094344-26-000007 with Exhibit 21.1), Old Republic International (Form 10-K 0000074260-26-000008 with Exhibit 21) and Investors Title Company (Forms 10-K 0000720858-22-000007, 0000720858-24-000003 and 0000720858-26-000011 with Exhibit 21; Form 10-Q 0000720858-26-000030); and the websites of Asset Preservation (apiexchange.com/about-us), Legal 1031 (legal1031.com/safety-of-exchange-funds), Exeter 1031 (exeter1031.com fee page) and Investors Title (invtitle.com/exchange-services), and IPX1031's press release of September 11, 2025 as carried by StockTitan. LandAmerica Financial Group Form 10-Q 0001002105-08-000361 and Form 8-K 0001002105-08-000407. Website statements are the companies' claims. Percentages and the interest example are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.