NatWest Tackles Mortgage Fraud with Equifax Verification

NatWest has become the first UK high street bank to roll out Equifax’s Verification Exchange across its mortgage pipeline, replacing payslips with live payroll data to speed up decisions and reduce fraud. 

Customers applying for mortgages with NatWest can now use income and employment verification drawn directly from payroll and bank account data, rather than uploading physical or PDF payslips.  

Through Equifax, the credit reference agency NatWest uses for digital mortgage checks, eligible home buyers can confirm their mortgage eligibility more quickly. 

The move follows NatWest deploying Equifax’s Verification Exchange solution across its mortgage application journey to combat mortgage application fraud.  

This digital automation removes paper and PDF payslips from the main application path for eligible borrowers, substituting them with real-time payroll data feeds. 

Although NatWest has framed the update as a consumer convenience, it is the first lender to offer this level of automation at scale.  

The shift marks a move from after-the-fact document checks to live payroll data telemetry, at a time when mortgage fraud and weaknesses in document authentication are growing. 

“We know that buying a home is a significant milestone in our customers’ lives, but we believe that the traditional mortgage application process can be made quicker and easier,” says Brad Fordham, Head of Mortgage Distribution and Underwriting at NatWest. 

“By offering the Equifax Verification Exchange solution, we are fundamentally reshaping the application experience, removing the friction of sourcing and uploading physical pay slips to deliver near-instant certainty.” 

 Fraud prevention and the authenticity problem

The push toward automated payroll verification is driven in part by falling confidence in traditional document-based proof.  

Cifas, a not-for-profit fraud prevention membership body, reported in its Fraud Behaviours Survey 2025 that 50% of UK adults think it is reasonable to commit first‑party fraud, where people knowingly misrepresent identity or give false information for financial gain. 

Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, says: “There is a growing and dangerous misconception that first‑party fraud is a victimless crime. Our research shows how easily everyday behaviours are being justified, despite the very real harm they cause, and the consequences people can face if they have committed them. 

“Education, clear consequences and cross‑sector collaboration are critical if we are to challenge these attitudes and prevent fraud from becoming increasingly normalised.” 

This normalisation of first‑party fraud coincides with technical limits in manual document checks.  

Underwriters have long relied on PDFs or physical payslips uploaded via broker portals, but digital document forgery is rising, with fraudulent identity documents up 72% in 2025 versus 2024, according to TrustID.

By moving verification from customer-submitted documents to direct API links into payroll systems, lenders remove the document layer altogether, neutralising tools that manipulate payslips. 

How the automated income check works

NatWest and Equifax use direct-from-source payroll data feeds via Verification Exchange to access income information, with customer consent.  

Once a mortgage applicant agrees, the system retrieves credit transaction payments into the customer’s current account, including payroll deposits.

Kristina Burwood-Ansell, Director of Consumer Products at Equifax, says: “NatWest offering Verification Exchange to their customers is a testament to the power of Equifax data in helping to create a fairer and more efficient mortgage ecosystem.

“By automating income and employment verification, we are not only tackling fraud risks and the inefficiencies of manual processes but also creating a faster and more transparent journey for borrowers.”

Equifax then analyses how many income sources exist, how often income is paid into the account, how stable that income is over time, and whether the employer has recently changed.  

This automated process, called Verification Exchange, blends standard credit bureau checks with real-time earnings data.