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Verification of Income & Employment
Size
$100B Opportunity
Current State:
Lenders, mortgage underwriters, credit card issuers, property management companies, the government, and employers themselves spend ~$100B a year to verify an applicant's income and employment. The current option set for the company seeking verification is to send a letter to the employer of the applicant, or they can ask Equifax's TheWorkNumber (TWN) to generate a report. Both of these methodologies have shortcomings.
Default view
The Choices
Considerations
The Work Number
Argyle
The Employer
Electronic
Verifiers can leverage TWN's API to run a request.
Electronic
Verifiers can leverage Argyle's API to run a request.
Physical/Electronic Form
Submitted by mail that can later be digitized with software the employer can purchase.
Minutes
The data is precompiled. TWN is able to fetch information on an individual and send it back electronically. This may result in feedback loops with the employer.
Milliseconds
Argyle pulls employment records in real-time. The speed of pulling employment time is measured in computer time.
Days to Weeks
The HR department of an employer has a low incentive to complete these forms; regulation requiring their completion is spotty, and it requires looking up data in payroll systems.
Questionable
TWN data can be months old and does not include all income sources or data variables many verifiers need.
High
Argyle's data is a real time view of a worker; clients can requests updates on any data element by subscribing to our webhooks. The accuracy of our data is only limited by the fidelity of the underlying payroll source data.
Decent
Employers are going to disclose the minimum required to avoid liability when asked about a current or former employee.
High
Argyle can go from day-level to year-level summaries of hours worked, net and gross pay, deductions and attendance information. TWN only offer yearly views. In addition, Argyle can read additional relevant information, including personal information, bank account information, and activity- and shift-level data.
Decent
The more information requested the more tedious it is to complete the verification. Some employers have policies to only release high level data on an employee.
High
TWN's cost of goods sold is 60% per transaction. This is because they need to purchase the data from employers and maintain a database and supporting call center.
Low
Argyle's cost of goods sold is server costs, measured in cents per account connected. We lead with other value props, but where necessary, we can lean in on price to win.
Low
It's a single form and the employer does not need to be paid. The verifier bears the costs associated with processing the responses.
The flow works on a consumer-permissioned basis. During any application process, the user will be asked to connect to their employer account(s). After the user is authenticated, income and employment data can flow into the application process.
