Published by Gbaf News
Posted on November 9, 2017
7 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Izabella Jagiello, Experian
How well do you know the people who work for you and are you right to trust them? No matter what size your business, candidate vetting is becoming more and more important for firms, whether you’re concerned about new starters or old hands.
More than 405,000 people are employed within the banking industry1, where company reputations can be vulnerable to the actions of one rogue individual. And without proper processes in place, you may be breaching new regulations and taking unnecessary risks.
So step 1 is to make sure you’re not breaking the law
In 2016 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched the Senior Manager Regime to help banks become more accountable both on an individual and a corporate level. So the burden is on you to complete and carry out all of the relevant checks that meet the legislation.
Your brand reputation is at stake, so it’s wise to apply the best protection you can, by checking that you have the right people in the right positions – particularly strategic positions and re-verify them periodically, too.
Next, minimise the risk of fraud
As reported in our latest Annual Fraud Indicator, procurement fraud is estimated to cost the UK private sector £121.7bn per year, with payroll fraud estimated at £12.7bn. The latest CIFAS research shows that between 2014 and 2015 there was a 60% increase in account fraud where unauthorised activity was made by staff on a customer’s account without permission.
Your employees have access to sensitive data so it’s up to you to be vigilant and put in place the appropriate controls and checks across all of your business areas. And fraud doesn’t just mean manipulating figures. In an increasingly competitive jobs market, CV fraud is another issue. 12% of candidates put false grades on their application and 38% of 25-32 year olds have major discrepancies on their CV (according to Risk Advisory). Ask yourself is it better to have no one in role – or someone you’re uncertain about? To me, this is an obvious decision. Our advice is to take your time and get the right person – or in other words: choose short term pain for long term gain.
Simplify the recruitment process and be compliant with data
Don’t let a cumbersome vetting process hold you back. Recruitment can often be a timely process, with employee data held by yourselves, recruitment agencies and in some cases, another 3rd party too.
Chasing information and collecting documents could increase the time taken to administrate checks. And if this data isn’t brought together and consolidated into a single applicant view, it means checks may be incomplete or inadequate. For candidates too, this could mean a poor onboarding experience and subsequent delays in filling the vacancy. They may well walk away out of frustration – one in four candidates immediately leaves the recruitment process if their onboarding experience is poor (Networx Innovate 2016).
Talent is a competitive market and therefore you need to be as swift and efficient in recruitment as you do in your customer service, which has resulted in outsourcing the process being more attractive.
What’s next?
Ideally, your candidate should be able to upload their necessary documents from the comfort of their home, via multiple devices to be able to self-serve without the need to make additional visits with paper documentation. This gives you access to a wider pool of candidates due to reduced time and overheads in terms of time taken out of their current employment for travel.
Increasing regulation and competition for talent need not be a barrier to hiring and keeping hold of the best people. With a whole raft of different employees and skill types needed, making sure you have the best workforce will help you grow. It will also help protect you from risk and being incompliant. This is a practice that should be done regularly throughout the employee lifecycle.
3Experian Annual Fraud Indicator 2016, in association with University of Portsmouthhttp://www.port.ac.uk/media/contacts-and-departments/icjs/ccfs/Annual-Fraud-Indicator-2016.pdf.
4 http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/violence/violence-at-work.pdf?pdf=violence-at-work
Izabella Jagiello, Experian
How well do you know the people who work for you and are you right to trust them? No matter what size your business, candidate vetting is becoming more and more important for firms, whether you’re concerned about new starters or old hands.
More than 405,000 people are employed within the banking industry1, where company reputations can be vulnerable to the actions of one rogue individual. And without proper processes in place, you may be breaching new regulations and taking unnecessary risks.
So step 1 is to make sure you’re not breaking the law
In 2016 the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) launched the Senior Manager Regime to help banks become more accountable both on an individual and a corporate level. So the burden is on you to complete and carry out all of the relevant checks that meet the legislation.
Your brand reputation is at stake, so it’s wise to apply the best protection you can, by checking that you have the right people in the right positions – particularly strategic positions and re-verify them periodically, too.
Next, minimise the risk of fraud
As reported in our latest Annual Fraud Indicator, procurement fraud is estimated to cost the UK private sector £121.7bn per year, with payroll fraud estimated at £12.7bn. The latest CIFAS research shows that between 2014 and 2015 there was a 60% increase in account fraud where unauthorised activity was made by staff on a customer’s account without permission.
Your employees have access to sensitive data so it’s up to you to be vigilant and put in place the appropriate controls and checks across all of your business areas. And fraud doesn’t just mean manipulating figures. In an increasingly competitive jobs market, CV fraud is another issue. 12% of candidates put false grades on their application and 38% of 25-32 year olds have major discrepancies on their CV (according to Risk Advisory). Ask yourself is it better to have no one in role – or someone you’re uncertain about? To me, this is an obvious decision. Our advice is to take your time and get the right person – or in other words: choose short term pain for long term gain.
Simplify the recruitment process and be compliant with data
Don’t let a cumbersome vetting process hold you back. Recruitment can often be a timely process, with employee data held by yourselves, recruitment agencies and in some cases, another 3rd party too.
Chasing information and collecting documents could increase the time taken to administrate checks. And if this data isn’t brought together and consolidated into a single applicant view, it means checks may be incomplete or inadequate. For candidates too, this could mean a poor onboarding experience and subsequent delays in filling the vacancy. They may well walk away out of frustration – one in four candidates immediately leaves the recruitment process if their onboarding experience is poor (Networx Innovate 2016).
Talent is a competitive market and therefore you need to be as swift and efficient in recruitment as you do in your customer service, which has resulted in outsourcing the process being more attractive.
What’s next?
Ideally, your candidate should be able to upload their necessary documents from the comfort of their home, via multiple devices to be able to self-serve without the need to make additional visits with paper documentation. This gives you access to a wider pool of candidates due to reduced time and overheads in terms of time taken out of their current employment for travel.
Increasing regulation and competition for talent need not be a barrier to hiring and keeping hold of the best people. With a whole raft of different employees and skill types needed, making sure you have the best workforce will help you grow. It will also help protect you from risk and being incompliant. This is a practice that should be done regularly throughout the employee lifecycle.
3Experian Annual Fraud Indicator 2016, in association with University of Portsmouthhttp://www.port.ac.uk/media/contacts-and-departments/icjs/ccfs/Annual-Fraud-Indicator-2016.pdf.
4 http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/violence/violence-at-work.pdf?pdf=violence-at-work
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