Experian has joined forces with verification platform Sikoia in a bid to circumvent the manual verification of income and employment.
The partnership will see Experian integrate Sikoia’s artificial intelligence-driven document processing technology into its suite of verification solutions, enabling automated extraction and verification of customer information directly from submitted documents.
The move is intended to reduce processing times and increase accuracy across use cases such as mortgage applications and credit assessments.
Despite widespread digitisation in other areas, manual checks remain the norm for many financial services firms when assessing an applicant’s income or employment. According to Experian, these checks typically take around 30 minutes per case and can take much longer in complex scenarios.
David Bates, managing director of credit and verification services at Experian UK and Ireland, said: “Experian’s Verification Platform is driving great value and benefits for both employers and their employees and Sikoia technology will help drive further automation.
“It boosts financial inclusion by reducing barriers and friction in the journey, helping people confirm their income and employment records as fast as possible.”
Sikoia’s AI-based solution is designed to extract and assess data from a range of documents including payslips, tax returns and bank statements. In situations where access to live data from payroll systems, HMRC or Open Banking isn’t possible, Sikoia’s technology provides a reliable alternative by automating tasks that have traditionally required manual intervention.
Alexis Rog, founder and chief executive of Sikoia, said: “At Sikoia, we believe in offering customers a flexible range of solutions that align with their existing preferences and processes.
“In many cases, customer-provided documents are required, and data can’t be verified automatically. That’s where Sikoia’s technology makes a real difference – bringing AI-powered automation to traditionally manual tasks.
“We’re excited to partner with Experian to help drive greater efficiency and superior income and employment verification across the industry.”
The technology also includes built-in tamper detection, document integrity checks and configurable business logic to ensure application completeness, providing real-time alerts that support faster, policy-compliant decision-making.
Experian’s broader verification offering includes payroll data access, document digitisation, and connections to Open Banking and HMRC open data. The integration of Sikoia’s tools is expected to enhance those services further, particularly in edge cases where standard data sources may fall short.
