Safe Harbour: How to achieve 100% completion
Safe Harbour is an enhanced standard of identity verification imposed by HM Land Registry.
It requires conveyancers to verify a client’s identity by scanning the NFC chip in their passport. It is a more reliable – and harder to spoof – method of identity verification than simply entering an individual’s passport details into a database.
It helps conveyancers prevent property fraud through enhanced identity verification, but it’s also a sign of trustworthiness and reliability for conveyancers.
Meeting it is fairly straightforward. It is typically done by downloading an app, placing your passport against your phone to scan the chip containing your identity data, then cross-referencing the photo stored against a facial recognition scan.
But while many providers offer all the verification bells and whistles, they may lack the capacity to actually perform the necessary checks. Instead, they outsource it to another provider – and therefore another app – which significantly reduces completion rates.
Checkboard, however, makes meeting the Safe Harbour standard even simpler, because we do it all in one clean, simple workflow.
Making Safe Harbour part of the workflow
Checkboard increases the success rate of NFC passport scans by making them just another part of the onboarding workflow.
As users go about uploading documents and completing checks, they can be seamlessly guided towards the NFC passport scan.
To ensure maximum performance and reliability, we’ve enlisted two trusted third-party providers – one for liveness and document checks, and another for the chip scanning itself – to make sure the scan goes off without a hitch.
The entire process nevertheless takes place on the Checkboard app itself, minimising fall-off rates.
Once everything is complete, the conveyancer receives a simple, readable PDF reports highlighting the results of the biometric scan.
100% Safe Harbour completion
The result is a completion rate of effectively 100%.
When you make the onboarding process fast and easy, on a single platform rather than half a dozen, your clients are more likely to complete every step, not get stuck halfway through.
Our users also tell us that even when they run into trouble, our customer support team is on hand to walk them through the process.
A higher completion rate means conveyancers now receive accurate, cross-referenced information about each client, sent straight to their dashboard. They can instantly spot red flags and inconsistencies, reduce their exposure to criminal risk, and communicate to HMLR they’re truly meeting the Safe Harbour standard.
Find out how Checkboard brings you up to standard. Get in touch.
A version of this article was originally published on Today’s Conveyancer. This version has been adapted for the Checkboard audience.
