Address verification is vital for safeguarding your company against fraudulent encounters. Before bringing someone onboard or doing business with a vendor, it is essential to verify their address as a part of the employee background verification check process. Being honest about one’s address is the first step toward trusting them about their entire identity. While companies do this in-house, it is advisable to bring reputed address verification vendors in India to help with the process.
What is address verification?
Address verification services authenticate a person’s claim of their living at a location. Companies across sectors use it to verify the addresses of employees, vendors, customers, and business partners.
When you hire someone or do business with someone, they have access to confidential information that can be compromised if landed in the wrong hands. Similarly, when you onboard a customer, you need to be sure they are genuine to prevent financial fraud. Those you hire, those you work with, and those you give your services should be authentic and trustworthy, and address verification helps with that filtering process.
Background verification is no longer optional
Numbers disclosed in a study done by AuthBridge in its annual report deemed the need for address verification indispensable. Eight out of 100 applicants misled employers with their job applications, and the IT sector had the highest discrepancy at 16.6%. [1]
How to carry out address verification?
There is the traditional process of manual address verification, where a field officer visits the address mentioned by the applicant in the form.
Details such as the person’s tenure and members residing are verified. It is advisable to vet the permanent address.
But these days, address verification vendors in India, have made the process digital. It adds to the convenience of both the employer and the applicant. But apart from that, this technologically advanced method is more wholistic
Digital address verification leverages the power of GEO-tagging coordinates, image recognition, and liveness detection skills to confirm the identity and the physical address of the applicant.
The candidate submits certain information digitally, such as a photo ID, a selfie, an address, and a live residence photo. When they do so, the longitude & latitude coordinates get captured, and multiple data points confirm the authenticity of the mentioned address.
Documents that serve as authentic address verification proof
- Bank statement reflecting the date of issue, not older than three months, and account holder name.
- Utility bills such as water bills, gas bills, internet bills, and electricity bills
- Current rental agreement duly signed by the tenant and landlord
- Recent Credit card statements not more than three to six months old
Why is address verification a critical aspect of background verification?
- It upholds the company’s reputation by preventing the hire of fraudulent candidates and averting the risk of confidential details landing up with unscrupulous candidates.
- If the deceitful situation spirals out of control, you spend a lot of time, money and could potentially be subjected to legal consequences.
- It prevents the company from engaging with candidates who lack integrity.
- Maintains company ethos in supporting concerned bodies by providing them address checks to investigate matters. This situation arises when employees are involved in questionable acts & need to be located.
- Address verification documents come in handy for other necessary office affairs.
Challenges with an address verification process
With the change in working trends and people adopting WFH (work from home) or remote working model, the probability of hiring ungenuine candidates became high, and companies couldn’t tell a fraudulent candidate.
The logistical constraints associated with the traditional way of address verification also posed a grave issue since they had to be done physically and without suitable technological infrastructure.
Structural and manual errors such as spelling mistakes, omitting ZIP codes and landmarks, and writing non-acceptable abbreviations, were rampant in the old way of address verification. There was non-standardization as people take down addresses differently, and this complicates the process because of data inadequacy.
Digital address verification vendors in India and globally can solve these manual errors and streamline the process. The solve issue of the remote workforce and field workforce address issues, as well as this process does not require a physical visit to the residence of the applicant. Capturing data from ID documents and photos directly will take care of incorrect data capture and manual errors. An innovative address verification vendor in India is a simple solution to address all the challenges!
