New Experian and The Access Group partnership set to streamline lending decision process

Through Experian’s Work Report™1, the UK’s first digital employment and income verification service, employees who are paid using Access Group’s payroll software will now have the option to consent to share their payroll information with another organisation digitally. 

This provides an instant and secure alternative for employment and income verification when applying for a range of financial services, including mortgages. 

Applicants are given the option to upload evidence manually via a lender’s existing systems or to use Experian’s Work Report™. If they do, the service automatically accesses – with an employee’s consent - the required records from their employer and passes them to the service provider.  

By allowing connectivity to an employer’s payroll data, it can provide direct confirmation of a consumer’s gross and net income, as well as employment status and tenure, in a matter of seconds.

Experian’s employment and income verification services now cover 77% of UK employees. 

Paul Speirs, managing director of Digital Consumer Information at Experian, said: “Accessing financial products and services is stressful enough without the added pressure of gathering crucial documentation to help confirm payroll information. It’s a hassle for the financial provider, the employer and, most importantly, the applicant. 

“Experian’s Work Report™ helps to ease this pain by providing a seamless, digital alternative to traditional cumbersome processes, helping enable a quicker, more efficient turnaround and improved customer outcomes. We are delighted to be working alongside The Access Group to help take this process one step further into the digital age.”

Charles Butterworth, managing director, Access People, commented: 

“Supporting customers with digital transformation is at the heart of our software solutions at Access.  Paying people right ‘first time, every time’ is the standard by which payroll teams are now held to, but it is no longer the only benchmark. With Millennials and Gen Z making up a significant percentage of the workforce, people have come to expect a consumer-grade experience from their work tech, including solutions that facilitate pay. Unlocking digital-first experiences that meet these changing employee expectations is, therefore, increasingly important to our customers and their people.

“By partnering with Experian, we’re able to provide our customers with even greater digitisation of their payroll processes while their employees keep control of their data and personal finances. Experian’s Work Report™ service will enable customers to facilitate a frictionless way for their people to apply for lending, whether that be car finance, a mortgage or another loan. The solution is an example of intuitive development of HR and pay solutions that add further value for our customers in supporting the wider employee experience.”

The partnership with Access lifts an administrative burden from employees, who chase employers for copies of their payslips; and from HR and Payroll, who have to find and share the data with employees. It also helps employers avoid having to share paper-based payslips, which reduces their carbon footprint. 

A recent Experian survey of 230 HR and payroll professionals shows that many large organisations receive an average of 150 requests a month from employees to source and share their payroll data. This equates to 11 hours a month of a HR and Payroll team’s time devoted to managing these requests. 

Those firms that are still relying on sharing paper-based payslips also have a significant impact on the environment. Even small firms with less than 10 employees may be generating 1.3m tonnes of CO2 a year, or 26kg of paper, by sharing paper-based payslips. 

Experian’s latest report ‘The State of Payroll Today’ is available to read here.