Release notes

Introducing the Konfir Decision Engine

Konfir Decision Engine – New AI-Powered Features

We’ve enhanced the Konfir platform with a powerful suite of AI tools to streamline and improve your employment verification experience.

New Features:

  • Employer Identification: Easily extract employer names from banking data with our enhanced employer matching system. This simplifies the process and lessens the need to rely on raw transactions alone.

  • Employment Verification: Detects employment with greater accuracy by analyzing income transactions. Provides confirmed employer names, start dates, and end dates.

  • Data Unification: Merges employment information from payroll, Open Banking, and tax data into a single, consolidated record. Ensures data accuracy, reduces the risk of fraud, and offers seamless access.

  • Transaction Cleaner: Effortlessly review banking data with clearer transactions. Groups payments based on payer information, making analysis faster and more efficient.

Benefits:

  • Save Time: Spend less time combing through raw data; focus on decision-making.
  • Increased Accuracy: Improved data accuracy for confident employment verification.
  • Reduce Fraud: Enhanced data cross-checking to minimize fraudulent activity.
  • Boost User Experience: A more streamlined and intuitive workflow.

Employment Timeline Improvements

We’ve improved our Employment Timeline by integrating data from Open Banking, Payroll systems, HMRC, and more, to ensure accuracy, reliability, and comprehensive UK coverage.

Key Benefits:

  1. Uncover the Whole Story: Easily compare declared employment information with verified data from multiple sources.
  2. Boost Confidence: Verified identity attributes, like National Insurance Numbers and names, add an extra layer of trust.
  3. Streamline Your Workflow: Our algorithms intelligently consolidate employer records, reducing duplicates and saving you time.

HMRC release and Product Improvements

Bug Fixes and Improvements:

Reed Candidate Payroll Connection Issue: Reed Candidates were experiencing challenges connecting to payroll. This issue has been effectively resolved, ensuring a seamless process.

  1. Infinite Loading Screen Fix: Some candidates encountered an infinite loading screen when connecting their accounts. This issue has been addressed and fixed to provide a smoother user experience.
  2. Additional Data Collection from CSV Upload:CSV uploads now collect candidate addresses and postcodes, facilitating one-click access for connecting payroll. Candidates no longer need to manually input their address; a simple click on the consent button does the job.
  3. HMRC Screen Wording Clarity: Wording on the HMRC screen has been refined for clarity. Candidates are now explicitly instructed to open a new tab to connect with HMRC and return to the previous tab upon completion.
  4. Timeline Source Display Issue Fix: An issue displaying the wrong source on the timeline has been fixed.
  5. Retry HMRC Option: Candidates now have the option to retry connecting with HMRC even if they had declined it before, providing increased flexibility and convenience.

Procius Collaboration, Efficiency Boosts, and Bug Resolutions

Collaboration with Procius: Elevating Background Screening in the UK

We has successfully onboarded Procius, a prominent background screening company in the UK. This collaboration empowers Procius to utilise cutting-edge technology, accessing secure, real-time employment data via Konfir.

Benefits:

  • Expedited background checks and verifications, setting a new standard in efficiency.

 

Bug Fixes and Improvements:

  1. Work Report – Handle Unicode in Employer Name
    • Payroll employers with Unicode in their names were not being returned correctly. This bug has been fixed, ensuring accurate employer name matching.
  2. Candidate Journey Wait Times Improvement
    • Candidates can now exit the journey while data is processing. Verifiers receive data only when the entire process is complete, optimising the candidate journey wait times.
  3. API Link Expiration
    • Enhancement: API candidate verification links now expire 30 days after creation.

PDF Generation and Candidate Storage Data Screen wording Update

Deepdive 1: PDF Generation via API

We’re thrilled to introduce a powerful new feature that empowers API clients to collect Konfir-generated PDFs effortlessly through API calls. This streamlines access to verified data, eliminating the need to build it into your own user interface.

Benefits:

  • Efficiency: Save time and effort by requesting PDF generation via API.
  • Data Security: Ensured that the PDFs are accessible only to intended recipients.
  • Expiry: PDF access expires after one hour, enhancing data security.

Deepdive 2: Enhanced Timeline PDF Generation

In this release, we’ve enhanced our Timeline PDF generation. Now, every Employment Record from the Timeline is included, providing a comprehensive view of a candidate’s employment history.

Benefits:

  • Comprehensive Data: All employment records from the Timeline are included in the PDF.
  • Organised Layout: Employment records are presented above the ‘activities requested’ section, improving document organisation.

Deepdive 3: Checkbox Wording Update

We’ve updated the wording on the data storage screen, changing the checkbox content from “I consent to the above” to “I agree to the above.”

Benefits: Clarity: The wording change makes the user’s agreement explicit and straightforward.

Work Report

We have integrated of Work Report into our data network, enabling our Employment Verification to access payroll, HRIS, and Benefits data for 80% of UK employees. This empowers us to offer instant employment verification and a comprehensive employment history overview, simplifying the process for candidates and improving efficiency for background screeners.

Benefits for Candidates:

  • Simplified Process: No need to find or remember payroll providers.
  • Instant Access: Employment history retrieved with consent.

Benefits for Background Screeners:

  • Improved Efficiency: Less time spent reviewing data.
  • Enhanced Reliability: More verifications completed efficiently.
  • Compliance: Secure API-based information sharing.

Employer Search for Verifiers And Candidate Verification Link

Employer Search for Verifiers

Konfir has introduced employer search for verifiers using the Konsole. To use this feature, simply enter the employer’s name in the search bar. A list of matching employers will appear, allowing you to select one or enter the information manually.

Benefits:

  • Increased efficiency: Verifiers can save time by quickly and easily finding employer information.
  • Consistency in Employer Names: This addresses the issue of data consistency and resolves variations in employer names for the same employers during in verifications.

Candidate Verification Link

  • We have removed the ability for Candidates to Request a Reactivate Link When Status is Confirmed Cancelled
  • We have extended the verification expiration link from 5 to 7 days, providing candidates with additional time to complete their verifications.

Konfir Employment Timeline 

Konfir Employment Timeline 

The Konfir Employment Timeline uses machine learning and authoritative data to create a comprehensive, chronological employment history for candidates. Unlike traditional methods, it goes beyond candidate-declared information, delivering a complete, unbiased, and verified snapshot of the Candidate History. This includes start and end dates for all identified employment, both declared and undeclared.

Candidate Journey Customisation and Enhanced Candidate Journey Experience 

Candidate Journey Customisation 

Clients can now customise the candidate journey to align with their brands’ colours and tone of voice. This is expected to boost brand consistency and conversion rates.

Enhanced Candidate Journey Experience 

We’ve enhanced our platform to provide a smoother, more intuitive, and less confusing candidate journey, particularly in data connections like bank accounts and payroll. Now, we capture specific reasons why a candidate can’t connect to a data source, offering tailored prompts and solutions. No more frustrating retry prompts for tasks they can’t or prefer not to complete.

Benefits:

  • Improved Completion Rates
  • Reduced User Frustration
  • Enhanced Efficiency for Your Team
  • Stronger Trust between Konfir and Users

Employer Identification in Activity View

Employer Identification in Activity View:  Automatically identifies and highlights payments from an employer and returns the employer’s name.

New User Sign-Up Flow Improvement and API Test Personas

New User Sign-Up Flow Improvement 

Product Tours: A helpful product tour is now available for first-time Konsole users and those returning after an extended absence. This tour guides users through the process of creating and reviewing verifications.

API Test Personas: We’ve introduced API test personas, based on real user profiles, to facilitate testing and debugging for API clients.

Konsole User Tools and Automated Candidate Follow-Up

Review / Pending Review Tab / Cancelled Tab: We have introduced separate tabs for New verifications, verifications awaiting review and cancelled verifications. This simplifies verification review and navigation. 

Retry Verifications: Verifiers can now resend verification links directly from the Konsole for verifications that have timed out, failed, or were cancelled.

Automated Candidate Follow-Up: For candidates who submit verification requests without any connected activities, our system will automatically follow up with them to request additional information.

Konfir Income Categorisation Engine

Deep-dive 1: What is the Konfir Income Categorisation Engine?

  • We have integrated into our systems an algorithm that cleanses and groups transaction data from Open Banking into relevant categories, such as “Employment”, “Benefits”, and more.

 

Deep-dive 2: Benefits of Konfir Income Categorisation Engine

  • Time-saving: Our engine does the hard work for you, categorising transactions and saving you time and effort.
  • Accurate and reliable: Our advanced technology ensures that transactions are accurately categorised, providing you with reliable and trustworthy information.
  • Easy to use: Our user-friendly interface makes it easy to view and interpret banking data, even if you’re not a financial expert.
  • Comprehensive: Our categorisation engine covers a wide range of transactions, including employment, benefits, and more, giving you a complete picture of a person’s financial history.

Transaction grouping, functionality, and PDFs

Released over the last two weeks:

  • Significant improvements to income transactions and grouping
  • Introduction of Request IDs
  • Konsole password reset improvements: fixed issue where email includes special characters
  • Additional PDF enhancements

 

Deep-dive 1: Transaction name normalisation and grouping

After a period of beta access, we’re delighted to announce that all clients will now be able to benefit from our banking transaction data cleaning and grouping improvements. This means that rather than seeing multiple transactions from the same payer, they’ll now be grouped together.

Deep-dive 2: Request IDs

Until now, there hasn’t been a simple unique Identifier that can be used to refer to requests sent via Konfir. The Request ID will be generated for every new request sent via Konfir and is visible both within the request and on the downloadable PDF.  Should you ever have a question about a particular request going forward, please use the request ID so we can help quickly. This is more efficient as the number of requests grows and also minimises the exchange of PII.

Deep-dive 3: Adding the Verified Toggle to the PDF

When using the Verified Toggle & Notes feature, your input will now be saved to the PDF so you can download all the relevant information to your internal systems.

Konsole and PDF data improvements

Deep-dive 1: Data Improvements – improving transaction grouping

We’re currently rolling out a feature to group transactions from the same payer together while removing irrelevant text from the name of the transaction.

Deep-dive 2: PDF Improvements 

  • Adding your organisation’s logo: You can now add your company logo to the PDF
  • Adding time stamps:  We can already share full reports showing turnaround times down to the minute, but now you’ll be able to see exactly when a request was sent to a candidate, and when they connected their data.
  • Adding new employer name and job title: If you use the Konsole to send requests, you’ll be able to specify which employer the candidate is being screened for, and what their new role is. If these details are provided, they’ll also be added to the PDF.

Improving transparency & trust

Released over the last week:

  • Payment data improvements from challenger banks
  • SMS Sender Name configuration
  • Including new employer name and job title in SMS & Email invites
  • Candidate journey enhancements
  • Enhanced threat detection & monitoring

 

Deep-dive: Challenger banks

A big part of our focus over the months to come will be adding value to the data we provide to you. While all banks provide different levels of data (both in terms of coverage, and data points) – the challenger banks such as Monzo & Starling tend to provide more than others.

From now on, when a candidate connects to one of these providers, we will display both the Payer Name & the Reference (rather than just one of them) so that Konsole users have all the information they need to complete the screening process.

Identity attributes

Deep-dive: Candidate attributes

1. Account holder names

From both our Open Banking & Payroll modules, we will now return the full name of the account holder connected to Konfir. The full name has been verified independently by either the bank provider, or by the candidate’s previous employer respectively.

2. National Insurance Number

Within our Payroll module, you’ll now have access to the candidate’s National Insurance Number, as verified by a candidate’s previous employer. This means you can delight your clients and your candidates by removing the need for this to be verified through documentation, and begin to get candidates onboarded even faster. We will be rolling these data points out to all Konsole users over the next couple of days.

Coverage and security improvements

Released over the last two weeks:

  • Added SDWorx & ADP Freedom to Payroll coverage
  • Password expiration process: if you enable this feature, your Konsole users will need to change your password at least every 90 days (or 30, if you’re an Admin)
  • Prevention of password reuse
  • Fixed an issue preventing some users from resetting their password
  • Fixed an issue where some candidates were unable to connect more than one bank account

 

Deep-dive: Payroll coverage

We’re adding to this list every couple of weeks to maximise the chance of candidates connecting to both banking and payroll. Over the last week, both HRevolution by SDWorx & ADP Freedom has been added to the Credential Access network. You can see our complete list of integrations here.

UX Improvements

Released over the last week:

  • Ability to specify new Job Role & new Employer Name in requests: so that you can build out even better reporting
  • Displaying the first and the last payment dates from a bank account in the downloadable PDF: so that you can store what’s needed easily via the PDF
  • Email Invites & candidate follow-ups
  • Candidate journey & Konsole UI improvements

 

Deep-dive 1: Specify new Job Role and Employer Name

Konsole users will now be able to specify a candidate’s new Employer Name & Job title. If you’re handling candidates on behalf of multiple employers, you’ll be able to build employer-specific reporting which will help to:

  • Communicate the value-add of Konfir to that employer
  • Leverage demographic-specific reporting to help launch similar employers with Konfir

 

Deep-dive 2: Email invites and candidate follow ups

  • In addition to SMS, we’re now sending email invites to candidates too. Educating and informing candidates is critical to both our and your mission. That’s why we’ve worked with our customers to build out candidate-facing landing pages.
  • We analysed open rate and conversion data to find the best time to contact people, and now send timely follow-ups both via SMS and email.  This should continue to move the needle on turnaround times, even though nearly one third of people are already completing within 30 minutes or less (more stats in our case study with Reed Screening).

Verified Toggle & Notes

Released over the last week:

With this new feature, Konsole users can now actively track successful verifications in line with your organisation’s processes

Deep-dive: Verified Toggle & Notes

  • Tailored to your business: decide how the Verified Toggle & Notes features are used by your team
  • Understand why candidates can’t be verified: review notes from your colleagues and ask us about Konfir’s reporting functionality to assess verification success rate
  • Measure what matters: leverage additional metrics to seamlesssly build a business case and remove ROI uncertainty

Candidate journey

Released over the last week:

  • Added a survey to the end of the candidate journey: so that candidates can optionally provide feedback to us to improve our services
  • Added client logos to the candidate journey: so that your candidates will feel more comfortable completing the Konfir process
  • Sorting of income transactions alphabetically: so that data returned is easier to read. We now order by the number of transactions first, then alphabetically
  • Updated our cookies policy

 

Deep-dive: Candidate journey customisation

Through our out-of-the-box solution, our clients and partners are able to send invites via SMS to invite a candidate to complete the Konfir journey. While our conversion rate so far has been high (around 80%), we’re always looking for ways to improve.

One of the main reasons reported by candidates for not completing the process is a lack of comfort and/or recognition. To combat this, we’ve introduced customisation to the candidate journey so that your logo appears throughout the Konfir journey too; seamlessly tying both experiences together.

It’s early days, but we’re already getting positive feedback from candidates saying that including the logo in the journey improves their trust in the end-to-end process.

Activity statuses

Released over the last week:

  • Activity status changes: An activity will now show as ‘connected’ only when there is data available for that activity. We’ve also added some help text to ensure Konsole users understand different states.
  • Data source statuses: Given a candidate can attempt to connect to multiple data sources, we’ve added labels to help you understand why data is unavailable
  • Cancelled requests: we’ve fixed an issue to ensure cancelled requests are visible in the Konsole, even when a filter is being used
  • Konsole filtering: improved responsiveness when using the ‘sort by requested date’ function

 

Deep-dive 1: Activity Statuses

We’ve made changes to ensure that we’re as accurate as we can be when showing whether a candidate has connected data or not. This means that depending on the activity type, we will now only display an activity as ‘connected’ where there is sufficient information available.

  • For Employment activities, this means having visibility of payroll data, and/or income data from at least one bank account.
  • For Gap in Employment activities, this means having visibility of either spending or income data from at least one bank account.

We have also added a tooltip next to the connection status to help you and your team understand what the status means.

 

Deep-dive 2: Data Source Display

We’ve added labels to each data source the user attempts to connect to give you further insight into why data is not available. The possible labels you might see are as follows:

  • “Candidate attempted to connect” – The candidate attempted to connect to the data source but was unsuccessful. For example, they may have provided incorrect log in credentials
  • “Candidate didn’t attempt to connect” – The candidate didn’t attempt to connect to a data source to verify this activity
  • “Data not found” – The candidate connected to the data source, but the source did not have sufficient data for the period being verified. For example, their bank only provides 2 years of transaction data
  • “Account not connected” – If the data source isn’t connected for any other reason

Credit packages

Released over the last week:

  • Credit packages: we’ve introduced enhanced visibility for our clients that have bought credit packages with Konfir
  • Connecting multiple bank accounts: we’ve introduced logic to handle an edge case where a candidate attempts to connect the same bank account more than once
  • Security improvements

 

Deep-dive: Credit packages

We’ve recently introduced credit packages to our clients, whereby set volumes of successful connections can be purchased in advance. To support this, we have added functionality to the Konsole to allow clients with credits to keep track of usage.

Multiple bank accounts, Payroll updates, and filtering

Some highlights from what we’ve released:
  • Connecting multiple bank accounts: candidates can now voluntarily connect more than one account, all within the same journey using Konfir’s Open Banking Module
  • Payroll integration for recent employment activities: our Payroll Credentials Module is now usable for both current employment activities, and historical employment activities that ended in the last 6 months
  • SMS Updates: We’ve changed the content of the SMS invites we send to candidates. These will now include a link to Konfir so that candidates can learn more about Konfir prior to entering the Konfir journey
  • Usability improvement to the results page in Konsole to help view all data at the same time
    Improved filtering on the Transactions page: you can now order by amounts
  • Data configuration update: to support data minimisation, you can now decide whether or not you want to pull ‘amounts’ (£ values) via our Open Banking module
Deep-dive 1: Connecting multiple bank accounts

When a candidate connects their bank account via the Konfir Open Banking module, the data returned to the Konfir Konsole can be used to verify Employment or Gap in Employment activities

Our research suggested that increasingly, people in the UK have multiple bank accounts where, for example, one is used for spending, and another is used for bills and/or salary. We’ve now made it possible for candidates to connect more than one bank account to ensure a full picture of any given activity period is provided when using Konfir.

Deep-dive 2: Payroll Integration Module

Previously, our payroll integration module only supported current employment activities. We have now expanded this functionality to historical employment activities that have an end date in the last 6 months. We, therefore, expect to see a higher usage rate of our payroll data sets going forward which will result in more granular data being provided to our clients more frequently. 

Deep-dive 3: Filtering on the transactions page

A couple of weeks ago, we released the new Income Display view and Transactions page. Since then, we have introduced improved filtering so that you can search for transaction amounts from a certain threshold.

Income Display

What’s changed?
  • When a candidate connects their bank account via the Konfir Open Banking module, the data returned to the Konfir Konsole can be used to verify Employment or Gap in Employment activities
  • We’ve made the data display page on the Konsole clearer, and you can now view individual income transactions received into a candidate’s bank account for every income source for each activity.
Why was it changed?
  • Previously, Konfir grouped income data into a single summary line. Our research showed that visibility of the first and last payment via Open Banking for each income source was fundamental in using banking information to evidence employment.
  • The new screen also allows you to filter by income based on the £ value so that you can easily assess whether declared or undeclared income sources require further investigation
Part 1: Data summary in Konsole
  • Income (or credit data) visible in a candidate’s bank account is now split per income source, and every transaction per income source can be viewed via the ‘View all’ button to the right of each income source found.
Part 2: Transactions page
  • Clicking ‘View all’ for one of the income sources will take you to a new ‘Transactions’ page, where you can see each of the payments received by the candidate within an activity period. When you land on the Transactions page, you’ll be able to filter by:
    • Payer name: to view different income from different sources all in one place
    • Bank name: in case the candidate has connected more than one bank account
    • Amount from: to only view income amounts from a certain threshold.
  • Importantly, if you don’t need data, we won’t display it so you can always ensure your organisation is compliant with GDPR data minimisation.
  • If the activity is a gap in employment, you may also request spending data via Konfir. Towards the top of the Transactions page, you can easily toggle between income and spending.