First Advantage, Pitney Bowes Collaborate To Prevent Fraud In BGV Industry

First Advantage, a Symphony Technology Group (STG) company and a provider of talent acquisition and electronic data solutions, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to partner with Pitney Bowes India, a subsidiary of Pitney Bowes global corporation and an USD 5.3 billion Fortune 500 company.

According to the agreement, First Advantage will collaborate with Pitney Bowes to secure employment documents at the point of origin. This drastically reduces the possibility of tampering with employment documents like relieving letters, pay slips and other documents thereby preventing fraud in employment verification and mitigating the Human Capital risk. “This initiative is yet another step by First Advantage towards its constant efforts to bring about innovative changes in the Background Verification (BGV) industry. As the market leader, we work very closely with our client partners to help them meet unsolved talent acquisition needs and we are excited to be working with Pitney Bowes on such a needed and differentiated solution,” stated Jack Freker, CEO, First Advantage.

The two companies recently announced the launch of pbSecure to customers in India along with plans to expand across other growth markets and other areas of verification. An intelligent system that secures data at the point of origin, pbSecure, is created to ensure data authenticity, prevent data tampering and speed up the process of verification from few days to few hours.

“From documents and data, to consumer goods like medicine, electronics and luxury goods, when we talk about fraud and counterfeit, we are talking about a USD 650 billion worldwide industry, and the latest update from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) shows that the figure could go up to a staggering USD 1.7 trillion by 2015,” said Eric Yves-Mahe, President, Pitney Bowes Growth Markets.

“As the number of fraudulent cases increase and the methods become more complicated, pbSecure is an innovative solution for businesses and companies to protect their products, their brands and their customers against fraud. First Advantage and Pitney Bowes with shared vision, global reach and industry expertise are well positioned to offer a comprehensive solution to secure documents and prevent fraud,” he added.

According to BGV industry trends, employment related discrepancies are the highest in the country and account for 65 percent – 70 percent of total screening discrepancies. There have been several examples in recent months of how a company’s brand is impacted because of a discrepancy in the information provided by an employee, all the way up to the CXO level. This increases the burden for both the relieving and hiring organisations to be diligent about employment record verification.

Navin Chugh, MD and SVP, First Advantage said, “At First Advantage our constant endeavour is to transform the way the Background Verification industry functions. It’s about technology, investment and thought leadership.”

“First Advantage has been an industry leader with many ‘Firsts’ in the BGV space; enhanced database checks, GPS enabled address verification, quality and automated reporting and self-service technology to name a few,” he added.

While it is mandatory and imperative for the industry, there is an increased cost in the form of incremental staff to support this activity on people who have exited; the same resource and investment could be better utilised on existing human capital. The adoption of this solution by Pitney Bowes - pbSecure can substantially mitigate the risk and cost of verification.