In this age of digitalization, companies are breaking out from the traditional norms and embracing technological advancement in their work. Manual methods have been replaced with digital artificial intelligence. Now there is no need to verify a person manually for a long period. The information provided by the client can be verified in a few seconds with the help of automated document verification. It plays a vital role in making onboarding secure in a short time.
Digital conveniences have also opened doors for criminals to perform illicit actions. They use fake documents to provide unauthentic information to perform their actions. Therefore, automated verification processes are utilized to have multi-layered security in a short interval of time.
What is Document Verification?
Different documents are required to have specific pieces of information such as an identity card to find the name of the individual and a utility bill for the address. Other documents such as bank statements, employment records, licences, and business papers are also used for various kinds of information. The documents require proper verification to find that the information provided by the client is accurate. Document verification is an important part of ‘Know Your Customer’ compliance for business. It is used for the identification of identity.
What is Online Document Verification?
In this digital era, businesses are on board. Now businesses perform several actions with the help of the Internet such as account opening, interviews, application, onboarding, financing, and document collection. Customers can submit scanned images of documents from a long distance to establish a business relationship with any company. These scanned images require online verification processes. Scanned documents can not be identified with the help of human recognition abilities, Optical character recognition (OCR) devices are used to identify whether the documents are legal or fake. Companies use automated solutions for online document verification.
How Does Automated Document Verification Work?
Although documents can be verified automatically initially it requires manual steps. Human beings have to upload or submit documents that are further processed and verified automatically. The verification process involves the following three steps.
- Document Collection
- Data Extraction
- Validation
- Document Collection
It is the first step of the verification process, it requires manual work as documents cannot be collected automatically. Human beings are required to provide them either in hard or scanned form. Scanned images are preferred as they reduce the afterward digitalization of paper form.
- 2-Data Extraction
After the document is submitted manually, the automatic process begins. Automatic advanced technology is used for data extraction. An OCR device is used to extract data which enables access to the information embedded in the document. The relevant data is extracted and compared against the provided information. Thus documents are verified to ensure that the specific information provided by the client is authentic. This process also helps to identify whether the document is real or fake as OCR can detect minor variations in documents such as forged signatures or fake stamps.
- 3-Document Validation
This step validates the authenticity of the document. It involves a variety of validation checks as per firm. Following are the examples of validation checks.
- Either the pages uploaded are complete in number or not. In some cases, the document is composed of multiple pages and they have to be uploaded as a complete document.
- The edges of the document are detected to ensure that they are not cropped or tampered with.
- Special features such as foils, stamps, and fonts in specific documents cannot be forged thus they are identified.
- Paper colour and quality are also detected to identify the variations. Some documents such as government-issued IDs and certificates have a specific paper quality that can not be duplicated.
Automated Vs Manual Verification
Automated document verification does not require multiple employees for the verification process. It involves the use of automatic AI and ML-based models to execute the verification process. It is both cost and time-effective as a large number of documents can be verified quickly and effectively in a few minutes.
Manual verification requires multiple employees for document verification. There is more chance of errors because of fatigue or workload. Its period is very long as compared to the automated verification process.
Final Words
It is the basic requirement of every organization to verify documents provided by the clients. It ensures that the information provided is authentic. Online document verification has facilitated long-distance business relationships. Automated verification has mitigated the risk of fraud and data breaches as it employs advanced digital technology. AI and ML algorithms in automatic processes are very smart and fast, they have reduced the burden of manual verification. Every business must use automated document verification services to have legal clients onboard.
