Streamline Your Onboarding Process with Digital Identity Verification
The UK Government has released further details on how employers will soon be able to use digital identity verification services.
Challenges for employers around ID verification, for both Right to Work and DBS checks, were amplified by the pandemic. This focused attention on the subject has resulted in changes to legislation which will allow digital identification. At Verifile we greatly welcome this initiative and look forward to launching compliant services to support the new process.
The changes to legislation are expected to take effect on or soon after 6 April 2022, but solutions may not actually be available on this date. Providers wanting to supply these services must first become certified against the DBS and Right to Work schemes. There are currently no certified providers, nor is there even a single certification body. A list of certifiers will be selected in due course. Until then the legislation change itself won’t necessarily result in an instant solution.
Verifile has been working closely with our technology and digital identity verification partners this past year on some different approaches. We are doing all that we can with the information available, including developing a working solution to be ready for the start of April. But, there are still aspects of this initiative which are unknown and need further detail from Government.
The Government has also indicated that the certification process itself could take up to 8 weeks. As such, we felt it necessary to manage expectations about timeframes accordingly.
Unfortunately, we must caution that there will be no silver bullet which will transform the process for all candidates overnight on April 6th. Even if there is a certified solution in place by that date, not all candidates will embrace a Government-led digital ID verification initiative. We will of course provide alternative solutions for candidates who are not willing to take the digital pathway.
It is important for us to stress that in all scenarios, you will be able to continue using the existing identity checking guidelines, including the temporary arrangements introduced in March 2020.
Our solution, which we intend to launch as soon as possible, will offer different options to meet all needs.
We’ll continue to update you as we are getting closer to April.