What is Employment Verification?
Employment verification is a background check that seeks to verify the identity of an individual and validate the legitimacy of their employment history. Employment verification may need to be conducted for several reasons.
Firstly, prospective employers typically conduct employment verification checks on potential candidates for employment during the onboarding process before they are hired. This is done to look for any inconsistencies that exist between whom an employee claims to be and who they really are. Such checks are designed to catch any lies that an employee may make about their qualifications, criminal history, education, job titles, or prior work experience.
Secondly, employment verification may also be conducted to verify a request for a bank loan or a visa. Employment verification can validate that an individual falls within a specific income bracket or is permanently employed within a specific country.
Employment verification will seldom be carried out as a standalone check; instead, it will typically form part of a more extensive range of checks that cover many different aspects related to an individual's identity – a process known as Know Your Customer (KYC).
Employment Verification as a Know Your Customer (KYC) Check
Know Your Customer (KYC) is a term that refers to procedures and mechanisms that are used to verify the identity of individuals/customers before conducting business with them.
When conducting KYC checks, a financial institution will typically be verifying:
- That an individual exists
- Whether that individual is exactly who they claim to be
- Whether that individual is eligible to receive the product or service in question
- Whether that individual poses a threat of money laundering or other such crime
- Employment verification forms a crucial part of helping a business to verify that an individual is who they claim to be and that all the information associated with them is correct.
Online Identity Verification and Employment History Validation
The rise of online identity verification and data validation tools has revolutionized identity verification and data validation system.
Online tools enable highly efficient, accurate and cost-effective means for identity verification and data validation. Today, online identity verification leverages powerful technologies like biometric information and artificial intelligence to deliver incredibly accurate and reliable identity verification.
Online identity verification allows for the verification of remote individuals – clients and individuals on the other side of the world can easily verify themselves, while businesses have the capacity to efficiently verify new clients, customers and employees in a seamless remote-onboarding process.
Furthermore, the personal information necessary for the verification of an individual’s identity can be pulled from a variety of trusted and secure sources, thereby increasing the reliability of the verification.
ThisIsMe offers a comprehensive range of solutions for employment verification. For businesses that need to process a significant number of employment verification requests, our advanced API enables the seamless automation of KYC and employment verification checks. For businesses that process a lower number of requests, our online Partners platform provides access to our comprehensive suite of world-class solutions on either a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis.
Why is Employment Verification Important?
KYC checks – such as employment verification – are important to catch and prevent fraud. A comprehensive KYC check that verifies employment history will highlight any inconsistencies in an individual’s employment history and identify red flags such as an undeclared criminal record or a falsified employment history.
Dishonesty during the application process is a major red flag and indicator that the employee in question poses a heightened risk of committing occupational fraud. A detailed employment verification check, therefore, is an important tool that empowers the business to take the necessary steps to effectively mitigate the risk posed by the prospective customer or employee.
Employment verification also helps to ensure that only legitimate employees are onboarded by a company, which is essential for companies with high staff turnover and companies that onboard digitally and have no or minimal face-to-face contact with their employees.
By verifying the identity and employment history of a potential employee during the onboarding process, a business can ensure that they only hire employees who are not malicious and are in the best interests of the company.
Furthermore, South Africa legally requires some businesses, institutions and organizations to conduct employment verification checks on new customers and/or prospective employees. Although exact compliance obligations will vary, a business may be legally obligated to conduct employment verification checks on a customer or prospective employee.
Employment Verification During Customer Onboarding
Employment verification can be an essential check during the customer onboarding process. For example, financial institutions will often need to verify an individual’s employment during the approval of a financial loan or the process of opening a bank account.
In most instances, financial institutions are legally obligated to verify the employment history of new customers. Alongside other KYC checks related to identity verification, employment verification checks are crucial for determining the legitimacy of an individual, as well as their applicability for a broad range of financial services like car loans or credit applications.
Employment Verification During Employee Onboarding
During the employee onboarding process, a business will verify many different details about an individual, such as verifying fundamental facts about their identity and confirming that the details on their CV match their real-life identity. Historically, this process was conducted manually by employees in a company’s human resources department.
Today, this process is conducted online and can be completely automated – an advancement that has revolutionized identity verification and data validation by slashing costs and drastically increasing efficiency.
This increase in efficiency means that large companies can significantly reduce their expenditure on their human resources departments, as such departments will no longer be required to conduct KYC checks manually on all new employees – such processes are all automated and can be conducted in a fraction of the time, saving time and money in the process.
Automated Employment Verification API
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can be understood as mechanisms that enable two or more software components to communicate with each other using established protocols and definitions.
In the context of identity verification and data validation – such as the employment verification process – an API enables a business to build the necessary software into the relevant customer and employee onboarding processes, thereby ensuring a seamless and efficient verification process.
The verification of an individual’s identity and the validation of extensive personal information, such as employment history, is an intensive administrative process that consumes vast amounts of human resources and capital if done manually.
ThisIsMe’s advanced API offers businesses the capacity to easily automate identity verification and information validation processes, thereby saving huge amounts of time and money and creating value by freeing up human resources in the process.
Furthermore, our API can be customized to meet the exact requirements of a client, meaning that every client can meet their precise needs with a world-class API tailored to their exact needs.
Online Employment Verification Services for South Africa
As South Africa’s leading provider of world-class due diligence and remote-onboarding solutions, ThisIsMe is proud to be at the forefront of a trust-based and privacy-compliant digital world. We offer a wide range of FICA-compliant KYC services that encompass politically exposed person checks, account verification services, and company sanction and credit checks.
To experience our full suite of due diligence solutions and see how we can help your business verify client information and meet its AML/CFT regulatory obligations, book a demonstration by contacting our team here.
