By Felicia Taylor, Equifax Workforce Solutions and Jessica Halterman, Avionté
The world today revolves around instant gratification. From the news to social media to text messaging, people expect the lines of information to be quick, accessible, and in real time. Television shows are a great example of this. Today, streaming networks let viewers watch entire seasons of episodes any time they want. People are, generally, no longer waiting around for a new episode each week or shuffling their personal lives around just to watch a show or movie.
Technology has changed how we get information. Just as we expect instant entertainment, we’ve come to expect automated information in most every-day activities.
Consumers want quicker credit, loans and even faster decisions for government aid. However, lenders and government agencies are required to verify an applicant’s income and employment in order to help approve the transactions and terms. There is really no way around that despite consumer demand for immediacy.
Employers, who traditionally need to respond to these verification requests, are generally only available during standard 9 am – 5 pm, Monday through Friday working hours. In any case, they certainly can’t respond automatically.
One situation is when your employee wishes to put an offer on a new home, but they first need to qualify for the loan. To do that, they usually need to confirm that the employee is, in fact, employed. Many often also need to confirm a salary. The employer may not be able to respond to that request for verification from the lender before the house is sold to another buyer.
Another example: consider an employee who goes car shopping over the weekend. If the dealership can’t get an automated verification of income and employment, your employee may have to wait until the following week to reach you to confirm that information.
Not only is this wait-time disappointing to the employee, they could have missed an opportunity for a special deal only available over the weekend. Another possibility is that your employee gets approved and purchases the car but at higher loan terms than the dealership would have provided with more income information available quicker.
The stakes are higher than the inconvenience of commercials. Automated verifications are beneficial in helping a verifier decide what can be purchased, for what terms or how quickly they are granted the government benefits they need.
The Work Number® service from Equifax helps to provide for that.
The Work Number database from Equifax offers automated income and employment verifications when employees need it—no matter what day or what time. Employers no longer need to respond to requests, which helps save valuable HR time, and employees often have faster access to credit and benefit decisions. Employees also don’t miss out on those verifications where employers are never called, such as approval for an emergency credit line increase or instant prequalification of a loan online.
Of the 223 million verifications made through The Work Number service in 2020 (1), more than 23 percent of those were completed outside standard business hours or over the weekend (2).
It’s safe to say that the convenience of binge-watching TV shows is here to stay. So is our need for quicker credit, loans and benefits. For employers, there’s never been a better time to help embrace those expectations to better serve the needs of your employees.
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