Last week, Konfir Konnect 2024 brought together industry leaders to address the future of employment and income verification.

A huge thank you to all partners, speakers, and guests for making it such a thought-provoking event. Konfir Konnect emphasised the importance of collaboration among industry stakeholders and advocacy for digital verification services.

Here’s a recap of the key moments and takeaways from the event.

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Guest Speaker: Olympian Nathan Douglas

Olympian Nathan Douglas kicked off the event by sharing his incredible journey to the Olympics as a triple jump athlete. He recounted his early career, highlighting the unexpected thrill of qualifying for the Olympics at just 21 years old. Nathan also discussed the significant challenges he faced during the World Championships, including his coach’s sudden illness, which tested his mental and physical endurance. His recovery process was equally inspiring, emphasising the importance of self-belief, determination, and resilience. Nathan’s story concluded with a victory at the European Championships, where he won his first silver medal.
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Expert Industry Panel: How employment data is reshaping verification strategies


Following the opening keynote, the event moved onto a panel session featuring experts Nishma Parekh from Goodlord, Caroline Smith from HireRight, Lisa Thomas from Mitie and Simon Mallender from Via Lucis, who discussed how employment data is reshaping verification strategies amidst rising fraud in referencing. 

Kicking off the panel, Nishma highlighted a startling 140% increase in income fraud when conducting tenancy references from 2022 to 2023, and discussed the use of trusted sources like open banking and payroll integrations to combat this issue. Lisa shed light on the clever tactics employed by fraudsters in employment verification and the necessity of using multiple data sources for comprehensive background checks. Following this, Caroline emphasised the compliance opportunity employment verification brings and the importance of leveraging data that cannot be tampered with.

The panellists also discussed the benefits of speed and automation in employment data. Lisa shared success stories of reducing recruitment onboarding times at Mitie by 70% using new data sources, while Nishma noted that achieving 24-hour turnaround times for tenant referencing is now a reality for Goodlord, highlighting the critical role of user experience in the verification process. Additionally, the need for international data sources and the potential of AI in screening processes were prominent topics. Caroline stressed the importance of expanding data sources for comprehensive verification, especially in international contexts, while Lisa discussed how AI could reduce costs and improve efficiency. Closing the panel, Simon emphasised leveraging more data sources and minimising human intervention to enhance accuracy, user experience and reliability.
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Breakout sessions: overcoming hurdles and sprinting to success

Following the panel discussion, attendees participated in breakout sessions, continuing with the Olympics theme. These were split into two:

1. Hurdles: Go to market for new verification tools

This session focused on the challenges of introducing new verification tools to the market and driving client adoption. Discussions included strategies for overcoming objections, effective marketing techniques, and building trust to ensure successful client implementation.

2. 100 metre sprint: automating operations with new data sources 

In this session, the focus was on the rapid implementation of automation using new data sources. Participants explored methods to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and reduce processing times through advanced automation techniques, ultimately aiming for a swift and seamless transition towards modern verification data sources.
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The Future of Employment & Income Verifications

Tom McAuliffe shared Konfir’s vision for the future of verifications, centered around the current challenges in data verification, such as issues with third-party data requests, the rise in fraud, and the limited understanding of risk. The session focused on 4 key product pillars:

• Employment & Income Verification Solutions: Konfir already covers 100% of PAYE workers in the UK via compliant access to data sources such as Payroll, Open Banking, and HMRC. To continue building on this, Konfir will be rolling out Accountancy integration for Self Employed, and international data sources. 
• Automation tools: verifications do not start or end with a single data source. Konfir has already built tools to help understand differences in data, a number of notification tools, and pre-built calculations.
• Employer Data: built ontop of Konfir’s Employer Database, organisations can leverage our Reference Fraud, Trading Date, and Industry Checks to supercharge the end-to-end process and intelligently route requests to the right sources
• Risk Insights: for a look into the future, building a better understanding of the risk of an individual through insights into Employment Stability & Income Trajectory. 
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Closing Ceremony

Chris Milligan wrapped up Konnect by awarding a few gold medals for guest contribution, reflecting on the themes of the day, the upcoming Digital Information and Smart Data Billour mission: To remove the friction from people's life events by creating a streamlined, transparent, and connected verification process.
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