Fluent Money has revealed that it has thwarted an attempt by a fraudster to obtain a loan using a fake driving licence.

The second charge provider put the success down to its investment last year in an ID scanning solution. The technology from TrustID is used by Fluent to check documents confirming identity requested by lenders.

The latest incident concerns an application for a loan of £40000, which had passed every standard check. However, when the driving licence was scanned by the Fluent team, the TrustID validation system red flagged the licence as faked. The loan was refused.

TrustID’s document scanners authenticate documents’ security features – both visible and hidden. The machine reads and stores the printed information on the face of the documents, compares chip and machine readable zone data within passports, driving licenses, visas and identity cards and takes infrared scans of these documents.

Tim Wheeldon, COO at Fluent Money, said: “Our responsibility as a partner to the lenders we support is to ensure good quality applicants. Without Trust ID’s technology, we may have unwittingly allowed a fraud to take place. As brokers and distributors, everyone has the same responsibility to ensure that we do everything we can to stop fraudsters.

“Trust ID’s system gives us, and our lenders, peace of mind and I would urge every master broker and distributor to make the same investment. It works.”

“Fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and we all need to be increasingly vigilant,” explained Tony Machin, CEO of Trust ID.

“A fake ID document can look authentic and to the naked eye may be indistinguishable from the real thing. It is only by scanning and validating the documents at a deeper level, that you can check whether they are genuine. Identity fraud is growing exponentially and lenders are vulnerable, particularly where they rely on third parties to authenticate documentation without the kind of scanning equipment that Fluent Money uses.”

Maeve Ward, managing director of residential mortgages at Shawbrook Bank, added: “When Fluent introduced the Trust ID scanner technology last year, we were delighted to see one of our partners taking the initiative on the growing issue of identity fraud.

“As has been shown with this latest case, it is clearly effective and thanks to this extra layer of protection, lenders like us are better served by our partner introducers.”