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There is a very wide range of situations in which you might be asked to prove who you are. Opening a bank account, applying for a job, applying for benefits – the list is endless. For young people who are still living at home with their parents or in student accommodation, proving their identity can be tricky, as their names aren’t on utility bills, and they’re unlikely to have credit card accounts either. This lack of official ID, especially something with a photo on it, can start to cause problems. So, if you’re in this situation, here’s our advice on the best way around the problem.

Provisional Driving Licence

If you don’t have a passport and are starting to struggle with providing official ID, the best starting point is to apply for your provisional driving licence. It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re actually learning to drive – the provisional licence is official government ID which will make life a lot easier. You can apply for a UK provisional driving licence with your birth certificate or student card, current address and birth certificate. Applying for your provisional online costs £34 at current rates and the application process is very straightforward.

Passport

The other option is to apply for a passport. This might be a better option if you are planning to travel abroad in the next few years and have no intention of learning to drive. However, getting a passport involves a lot more form filling, expense, and potentially hassle. The online application cost for an adult passport is £75.50 at current rates, more than double the cost of getting your provisional driving licence. If you have had a passport as a child, this will be treated as a renewal and usually passports take around three weeks to be issued. If you’ve never held a passport before, then you will probably be called to an interview at one of the passport centres around the UK. There’s no charge for booking the interview, but there will be additional costs in terms of travelling expenses and potentially loss of earnings if you need to take time off work.

Building a Financial History

The easiest way of building your own financial history is moving out of home or a house share and getting utility bills with your name on them. This is often not an option however, and there are lots of other things you can do too. The first thing is to make sure you are on the electoral register, either at home or your student accommodation. Open a student bank account and think about getting a credit card even if you are not intending to use it. The next time you upgrade your phone, take the contract out in your name and make sure the bills are settled on time, every month. Think about downloading an app such as ClearScore, which will show your current credit rating and give tips about what you can do to increase your score and give a bigger financial footprint.

According to a recent survey by the University of Portsmouth, the cost of recruitment fraud in the UK has reached the staggering figure of £24 billion. This figure covers the cost of advertising positions, salaries for recruitment staff, and the losses which could be encountered by a business if they take someone on who isn’t who they say they are. Determined fraudsters will find a way to circumvent even the strictest pre-employment checking processes which a company can put into place. However, knowing the main tricks which fakers use can help you identify which risks are a factor in your company and take steps to minimise them.

Key Findings

Some of the findings highlighted in the University of Portsmouth report are shocking, such as the fraudster who conned his way into a job as a commercial pilot. Or the European bank which lost over 5 million euros in fraud after recruiting a former temp worker without going through the proper recruitment process. Although these serious cases show just how bad things can be if you don’t check up on applicants, the problem isn’t just limited to a few rogue fraudsters.

University of Portsmouth researchers found that a staggering 80% of CVs examined showed some type of discrepancy. One of the most common lies was around experience, with 21% of applicants claiming more responsibility or experience by inflating their job titles. 12% of CVs contained lies about exam or university grades. 18% of companies reported that in the previous year they had been given fake documents to support someone’s application. There is growing evidence of a thriving black market in academic and professional qualifications which may help applicants secure a job, especially in the financial and healthcare sectors.

Quantifying Losses

In the past, businesses have often been reluctant to disclose exactly what losses have been incurred by employing someone who isn’t what they think they are. The losses can be split into two main categories. Someone wo is desperate to secure a position and fabricates references or plays up their experience isn’t necessarily criminal. However, they are more likely to be incompetent and not up to the job you have employed them to do. Often, it can take a while for their lies to be uncovered, and by that point you may have lost key customers, or other decent members of staff too. Getting rid of them is usually the least expensive part of the process; recruiting again and rebuilding your company’s reputation might take a lot longer.

The other main group of applicants are the determined fraudsters who have their eye on emptying your bank accounts from the off. These people try to lie their way into positions in the company which give access to suppliers, accounts or administrative systems which help them in their fraud. Companies have also reported that failing to conduct proper pre-employment checks or staff has also led to incidents of violence against colleagues, theft, or even examples of industrial espionage.

A recent survey by the University of Portsmouth has revealed some surprising findings about the state of recruitment fraud in the UK. The widely reported headline from the report was that annually, recruitment fraud costs companies across the UK £24 billion. The study also highlights some of the most extreme cases, such as the oil executive who was imprisoned after faking his way into a six-figure salary by claiming he had three different university degrees. However, perhaps more interesting for most companies is the section about what companies typically do to try to mitigate the risks for their organisations.

Most Common Types of Pre-Employment Checking

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found that out of the 49 employers they spoke to, 43 chased up references from people applying for jobs. A slightly lower number took steps to confirm the details which the applicant had given on their form, CV or during interview. This could mean calling up previous employers to verify job titles or asking universities for confirmation of degree results. Around half of employers also said they ran police background checks on applicants, but as many criminal records checks are restricted to a specific type of job, this isn’t always possible.

Less Common Checks

There is also a huge other range of checks which employers might decide to run on people applying for a job with them. Only around a third of companies look through specialist databases to confirm details which applicants have given them, and a similar number look at directorship databases, look through the newspaper databases to see if anything comes up, or checks the public records about county court judgements or bankruptcies. Although only around a third of companies admitted to conducting a trawl through the applicant’s social media accounts, this tactic is becoming more common as it’s free and quick. Obviously, the exact checks will depend on the type of role under consideration, but this study indicates that perhaps companies should be doing more to check up on people applying to work with them.

Current Employee Checks?

Most checking is done on people who are new to the company, and that’s understandable. But increasingly, companies are vetting their staff on an ongoing basis. In the University of Portsmouth study, most companies said that they didn’t do anything to check up on staff once they were in the organisation. So even when switching to a more senior position or applying for a position in a different location in the same business, references aren’t being checked, and information isn’t being verified.

One of the cases highlighted by the report shows up just how dangerous it can be to be lax checking up on people who are working in your company already. A major European bank made just that mistake when taking on an employee who had previously had a short-term contract with the business. The employee was later convicted of fraud, costing the bank over 5 million euros. This just proves how dangerous it can be to assume that just because someone’s worked with your organisation in the past, that they’re a good choice.

We’re all becoming increasingly aware of the risks which companies are facing in terms of recruitment fraud. In one recent study, 80% of CVs were found to have some sort of inaccuracy on them, from a slight grade increase on one exam result through to a wholesale fabrication of previous jobs. For most companies, the only way of checking up on people who have applied for jobs with their organisation is to ring up previous employers, check industry databases, look at social media accounts or chase up references. But could advances in artificial intelligence soon provide a better way of going about the process?

What Can AI Do?

Artificial Intelligence is already playing a valuable role in fraud detection in other industries. Most of us will have experienced getting a call from our credit card company or bank, asking if it really was us making a certain transaction. This is all down to artificial intelligence looking at patterns, working out what’s normal and what raises a red flag. The amount of data flowing through a financial services organisation is just too plentiful for someone to trawl through and try to spot when something isn’t right. Could the same principles be applied to recruitment fraud too?

Highlighting Key Risks

Data can help highlight the areas in a business which are at higher risk of fraud and losses. This can be done by looking at data from all over the world, comparing which departments in businesses suffer higher losses on average. Looking at data from companies with similar structures and in a similar industry could help highlight weak spots in your organisation and will help you identify which positions might require a higher level of checking than others.

Once you have recruited employees, AI can also be used in the same way as it works to identify unusual transactions on a credit card. Artificial intelligence can look at every transaction flowing through your business to help spot an anomaly, or perhaps help identify when staff are looking at customer files when they shouldn’t be. This type of software could help provide an early warning of something going wrong in your business, before you start to incur heavy financial losses.

Analysing Applicants

There is also some evidence that tech companies are going one step further, by using software to help analyse words and phrases used by applicants on cover letters or in application forms, or even by analysing facial expressions when candidates are filmed giving their responses to a set of standard questions. The idea is to compare traits exhibited by candidates against responses given by previous successful applicants in the same organisation. However, it’s not all plain sailing with AI. Many companies have already abandoned the technology in favour of more traditional methods as the AI software has in some cases discriminated against women, or people from ethnic minority groups. But as computers get smarter, and recruiters start to appreciate how useful they can be in identifying trends, the use of AI will be increasingly common in all recruitment decisions.

Uber, the app which has been changing the way the taxi market works across the world, has again had its licence to operate in London rejected. Transport for London has highlighted several serious concerns about the way in which Uber and its drivers work in London, especially concerning insurance for the cars themselves, and identity verification for the drivers.

Fake Identities

One of the most shocking revelations in the Transport for London licence refusal was that over 14,000 Uber journeys had taken place with a driver who had faked their identity to log into the Uber app. This is all down to the way in which the Uber software worked, which allowed an unverified driver, who hadn’t uploaded proof of driving licence, car insurance or a DBS check to upload their details as an additional driver on an approved account. This driver was then free to pick up customers.

Uber has responded to Transport for London’s findings, saying that the company is taking steps to close loopholes in its system and stop this happening again in the future. However, Transport for London has made it clear that they cannot be confident in the processes and procedures put in place by Uber in London.

Continued Operation

Although the news of Uber’s licence refusal was all over the news, the company and its 45,000 drivers are continuing to pick up passengers across the capital. There is a right to appeal against the decision, and while any appeal is being considered, Uber can continue to operate. There is also the side issue of Uber’s licensing in other parts of the UK; if unlicensed and unverified drivers can pick up passengers in London, does that mean they are doing the same in other towns and cities in the UK too?

What Should Be Happening?

Just as with all taxi companies, Uber has a legal obligation to check up thoroughly on the people who are applying to work with the company. There has also been ongoing legal wrangling over whether Uber drivers are self-employed or employed, but Uber still has the responsibility of checking up on people registering with their app before letting them loose on customers.

All taxi drivers, whether they drive for Uber, are self-employed or work for a longer established taxi company have to come up to a basic standard. Uber should be making checks on their right to work legally in the UK, that they have the correct driving licence and that the car they will be operating in is up to scratch too.

The keystone to all checking done by Uber – and all other employers – is to make sure that the person applying for the licence matches up with all the other identity documentation which is being provided. This isn’t always easy. The sheer volume of applications from people who want to be Uber drivers increases the possibility that someone will slip through the system. In order to regain their licence to operate in London, Uber will have to convince Transport for London that they have tightened up security in their processes and closed all previous loopholes.

The ongoing Brexit negotiations are causing high levels of uncertainty from employers about what exactly is going to happen once the UK leaves the EU. In fact, it’s still not very clear that we will be leaving the EU, and if we do leave, whether it will be with a deal or without a deal. It’s all very confusing. However, there has been some guidance from the government about the issue of right to work checks, which should go some way to reassuring employers.

No Changes Until 2021

The most recent information released by the UK government states that there will be no change in the way citizens of the EEA have to prove their identity until 1st January 2021. This will apply even if the UK leaves the EU without a deal. Although we talk mostly about the UK leaving the European Union, it’s the European Economic Area, or EEA which applies in this case. The EEA is made up of all the countries which are in the European Union, plus Norway, Switzerland and Iceland. These three countries sit outside the EU, but are part of the wider customs union.

New Responsibilities

The government is clear on what employer responsibilities will be in the event of Brexit and in any transition period which follows. Current identity verification laws will remain unchanged. That means that companies will still be fined if they are caught employing illegal workers, so managers and recruiters still have the job of asking for passports and checking that the person in front of them matches the official identification provided. That is the process whether the applicant is British, from a European country or from further afield.

The new clarification puts employers’ minds at rest about what happens to workers who lose their right to be in the UK at the end of their employment. Up to 1st January 2021, employers will not have to go back and check on the immigration status of any EEA national since the date of any Brexit, and they won’t have to check that the person intends to leave the UK if they no longer have the right to be here. The government also reiterates the need to keep high quality records about identity verification. Most employers take photocopies of passports, and these should be kept for 2 years after the employee concerned has left the job.

Temporary Leave to Remain

The government also intends to create a temporary status for EU and EEA residents who arrive in the UK between the Brexit date and 1st January 2021 to apply for temporary leave to stay in the UK, work and apply for whatever other paperwork they need to legitimise their stay. However, this arrangement is bound to form a key part of the Brexit negotiations should the government go back to Brussels and try to get a better or different deal. So although the government currently gives the above advice to employers about identity verification, there’s every chance that we may see further changes in the New Year.

Unsurprisingly, the British media generally concentrates on news stories about people who have come to the UK to work illegally, rather than experiences of other countries. However, this situation has recently been flipped on its head with reports that the Chinese government is considering a crackdown on the estimated 250,000 people working in China illegally as English teachers.

Strict Visa Requirements

China has very strict rules about what types of people can be employed in the country as English language teachers. Visa applicants must be native speakers of English, have a university degree and a qualification in teaching English as a foreign language. Teachers also need a health check, and a police criminal records check. All this paperwork takes time, and therefore it’s no surprise that some agencies are happy to bend the rules for applicants. There is a very high demand for English teachers in China, and experts estimate that as many as 60% of the teachers currently in China are not there legitimately.

Potential Crackdown

Anyone considering taking a job as a teacher in China should be aware that they are taking a risk. Although the Chinese middle classes are desperate for their children to learn English, the increasing problems caused by poor quality teaching or exploitative job advertisements are leading to the authorities considering a crackdown. Chinese legislation allows for fines of up to £2,200 for working illegally, a fortnight in prison and then deportation. In theory it’s the school employing the teachers which is responsible, but in practice, it’s the foreign teacher who pays the fine and ends up in prison. Is it worth failing foul of the law in order to get a couple of years working overseas? Given the wide availability of information online, could being deported come back to haunt you in years to come when a UK employer decides to Google your name?

UK Comparison?

In the UK we don’t import English teachers, and illegal working in the education sector is not an issue in this sector. However, there are several other sectors in which illegal workers are found more often than others. Restaurants, the hotel industries, beauty salons and other small service businesses often employ more illegal workers than larger multinational organisations with professional HR departments.

However, being a small business does not opt you out of your obligations to check up on the people who are applying for a job in your organisation. All employers have a legal duty to verify the nationality of the people working in their business. Most will do this by asking to see a copy of a passport, showing nationality and any immigration stamps and visas which might be relevant. Just as with the situation of the teachers working in the grey economy in China, there are stiff fines for illegal workers in the UK too, although the business pays rather than the individual. Legislation around checking the identity of those who you employ is always changing and will change even further depending on what happens regarding the Brexit process.

Details are still unravelling about exactly what happened to the 39 people who were found dead in a truck in Essex after entering the country illegally. Investigations are ongoing into the international people trafficking ring, which appears to have involved bringing container loads of Vietnamese nationals into the UK on fake Chinese documentation. The criminal case is likely to rumble on, with a trial date yet to be set.

It’s very easy to write this sort of tragic case off as nothing to do with you. However, if you run a business or are involved with interviewing and recruitment, it may have a lot to do with you. This headline-grabbing case has brought home how desperate people are to get into the UK and secure a job here.

People Trafficking

Many of the people who are brought into the UK in the back of lorries have paid huge sums of money for the privilege. In order to pay back the gangs who arrange the illegal entry, trafficked people are often put to work in nail bars, car washes or other businesses until they’ve paid their debt. However, people who make their own way into the UK, or just overstay a legitimate entry visa, are not allowed to work legally either.

Checking Identity

The responsibility for checking that someone is legally allowed to work in the UK lies with the employer, not the Home Office. Employers can be hit with huge fines of up to £20,000 for each illegal worker they employ. Therefore, it’s standard practice to ask people to bring their passports to interview. The issue of employers checking up on their workers’ nationalities and immigration status is controversial. Some employers resent being asked to do what they perceive as UK Border Agency’s job, but currently there are no plans to overhaul the system.

Two Related Issues

If you’re responsible for making sure that people applying to your company are legal workers, where do you start? Well, there are two key issues to consider. Firstly, there is a group of people who just don’t have any documents at all. They’ve never had a passport or refuse to show any proof at all. This is usually a fairly easy scenario to deal with.

A trickier situation concerns people like the people who died in the container lorry in November. They were all carrying documents, but they were fakes. How do you spot when a job applicant is claiming to be something they’re not? This is altogether more complex. Care should be taken over the identity verification process. It’s not just enough to confirm that the person has a passport which entitles them to live and work in the UK. Another step for identity verification has to be verifying that the documents are genuine, and that they belong to the person in front of you.

The good news is that you don’t need to be an expert. Immigration authorities will offer help and advice for those struggling with verifying documents. There’s also lots of information online about how to spot the common problems with counterfeit documents.

The growing issue of identity fraud has rarely been out of the news recently, in the wake of the bodies of 39 people being found in a truck in Essex. Although the trial in the case has yet to start, another recent case saw an Oldham fraudster jailed for 4 years and 9 months over illegally obtaining British passports.

Fraud and Assisting Unlawful Immigration

Mohammed Asif, from Oldham in Greater Manchester, was found guilty of the charges of fraud, and assisting illegal immigration. Asif ran an immigration advice company and charged people up to £10,000 for a passport which would enable them to live and work in the United Kingdom. Running an advice service is not illegal, and neither is providing assistance to legally obtain documents. However, Mr Asif and his accomplices went one step further. Asif targeted the relatives of people who had recently died, who were legally in the UK but of Pakistani origins. He stole immigration papers and other documents belonging to the dead UK resident and then used these to form the basis of fake applications for people who had no right to come into the UK.

In a further twist, it was revealed that Mr Asif was himself in the UK illegally, using documents obtained in the same way to get into the country. Several accomplices have also been arrested for related offences including fraud. The illegal applications were based on people claiming to be natural children of the two naturalised citizens who had died. Investigation into the applications began as far back as 2013, after staff at the Passport Office started to notice anomalies on several sets of applications all submitted through the immigration agency fronted by Mr Asif.

Implications for Identity Verification

From an employer’s point of view, this case raises a whole lot of issues when it comes to identity checking and verification. All good employers know that they have a legal duty to make sure people working for them are in the UK legally. But in this case, the people who had come into the UK using the passports issued through Mr Asif’s agency had genuine British immigration visas, issued to them and bearing their photographs and biometric data. No employer would have any reason to doubt their status in the UK.

Luckily, the law is on your side as an employer should you come up against who has been assisted into the UK by a fraudster. All that is required of an employer is that they take all reasonable steps to make sure that a candidate is who they say they are and has legal documents. In this case, all passports and other documents were indeed genuine, and had been issued to the people involved. The fraud aspect went much deeper than simply putting someone else’s photo in a passport. Employers should definitely be aware of the scams which operate, and the tactics the fraudsters may use, but are not professional immigration investigators. There is no need to go beyond the usual steps of looking at passports and verifying identity to the best of your ability.

A recent survey has revealed just how popular biometric verification is with the general public. In recent years we have all become accustomed to opening our mobile phones or opening apps by placing a thumb over the sensor. Kids across the UK are paying for their school meals with their fingerprints. Just how far is UK society willing to take biometric verification?

Mobile Phone Access

The study into how willing we are to use biometric verification in many situations was carried out by Equifax, one of the UK’s leading credit reference agencies. Unsurprisingly, the main conclusion was that Brits are happy to use fingerprint recognition to open up their mobile phones rather than putting in a code. 71% were happy to use this technology or go even further by using facial recognition or eye retina patterns. Also, a majority of people were positive towards the idea of using biometric data when proving your identity at a polling station on election days or verifying that you’re old enough to buy a round at the local pub.

Security Concerns

Despite people being happy to use biometrics in some situations, there was marked reluctance to use the technology in other situations too. Only 46% of respondents said they’d be happy to use biometric verification to withdraw cash from a machine or over the counter. 45% would be comfortable using it to turn their car ignition on, and only 41% would be prepared to use their fingerprints or retina scan to unlock their front door.

Future Predictions

The survey also showed that most people think that we’re all going to be using biometrics more over the next decade. Fingerprints were felt to be the most secure form of biometric verification according to respondents, followed by facial recognition and retina scanning.

Equifax, the organisation which commissioned the study pointed out that adopting biometric verification when opening a bank account, making payments or applying for a job helps with security. Identity fraud is an increasing problem and having a way of securely verifying who you’re dealing with should also cut down on this. Furthermore, the requirement for some sort of biometric verification may cut down on scammers convincing customers that their accounts have been compromised and that they need to move their money out.

Biometrics in a Work Context

Biometric verification may also have an increasingly important role in recruitment in the future. Currently, it’s the job of recruiters to ask for identity documents and dig into an applicant’s background to confirm they are who they say they are. Biometric verification should be able to help with at least part of this process, by helping recruiters match up the person in front of them with the biometric data. However, it’s not going to help with people who lie on their CV or exaggerate their experience but may help in the first sift of applications. New government rules coming in to force in 2020 are going to put more responsibility for checking onto employers, so it makes sense to get up to speed with the new requirements now.