Employment and income checks sit behind decisions that carry real risk and real cost. For years, the traditional processes used to conduct them - such as referencing and document checks - have been slow, unpredictable, and manual, leading to poor outcomes for both applicants and the organisations verifying them.

Over the last decade, that has changed. Digital verifications now allow employment and income checks to be completed online, quickly, and with far greater confidence. This article explains how that shift happened and what it means for you.

At a fundamental level, all verification processes (old and new) follow the same logic:

What has changed is the process around it - how evidence is collected, how quickly and reliably it can be assessed, and how much effort is required to reach a decision.

Historically, verification relied on two primary methods:

These methods were never perfect, but they worked well enough for a long time. However, both share the same structural limitations:

As more parts of hiring, renting, and lending processes digitised, verification remained relatively manual - until the gap became too large to ignore.

Over time, several forces exposed the limits of traditional verification and accelerated the shift toward digital models.

Employment and income checks became more common across industries - not just in hiring, but across lending, renting, and regulated onboarding. As verification volumes grew, manual processes became harder to sustain at scale.

Modern employment is less straightforward than it was a decade ago. Shorter tenures, variable pay, multiple concurrent roles, agency work, and self-employment have made single documents or referee responses a poor reflection of real income and stability.

Verifications unlock high-value outcomes, which makes them a target for misrepresentation. As AI and other tools have advanced, producing convincing fake payslips, bank statements, or reference details has become significantly easier.

Industry reporting has shown a rising rate of discrepancies and fraud attempts, particularly where verification processes remain document-based. This has increased the need for evidence that comes directly from trusted systems of record, rather than applicant-supplied files

Compliance requirements have also became more stringent. Organisations today face greater pressure to ensure verification processes are:

Manual, inbox-led workflows struggle to meet these standards, accelerating the shift toward structured, consent-led verification models.

At the same time, trusted digital employment and income data became far more accessible. Open Banking is now increasingly used by lenders to validate income in minutes rather than days, and payroll and government-linked systems have made verification evidence more structured and reliable.

Digital verification changes the evidence layer of the process. Instead of relying on referees or documents, evidence is retrieved — with the individual’s consent — directly from systems that already hold it, such as payroll providers, banks, or government records.

In practice, this means:

This allows decisions to be made faster and with less manual effort.

Digital verifications are now widespread across industries and have become the standard rather than the exception.

Manual methods have not disappeared entirely. They are still required in some cases - for example, when digital data is unavailable or an individual chooses not to consent.

However, these cases now represent a small proportion of overall verification volume. As a result, many organisations are moving toward:

The overall direction is clear: verification is shifting away from manual evidence handling and toward digital, consent-led, source-based verification that better fits modern decision-making.