January 25th, 2023 | Joy Henry, U.S. Head of Technology & Business Services

Three Reasons for Fingerprinting Your Financial Service Employees

As a leader in the financial services industry, you’re already required to run fingerprint-based background screening on some of your employees. That’s good from a compliance perspective –— but compliance alone may no longer be enough.

Here are three key reasons financial services firms should be expanding their fingerprinting program(s)s to a broader base of employees.

Reason 1: You can never be too safe and secure

There’s a lot of noise out there about whether name-based or fingerprint-based background checks are more secure. From our extensive experience in background screening, we know there’s value in both. Here are three scenarios that reinforce our recommendation of fingerprint-based checks for the financial services industry:

• Identity Verification. – Fingerprint-based background checks help ensure that the name and social security number belong to the person you’re hiring. Identity documents and social security numbers, after all, can be counterfeited or stolen. Make sure the person you’re hiring is who they say they are.
• Customer Perception. – The importance of customer perception in financial service success is greater today than ever before. In fact, companies that actively develop an emotional connection with their customers are more successful in retaining existing customers, gaining new customers, and increasing the value of both. And since the financial services industry consistently looks for ways to gain consumer trust, it’s well worth it to prove that your organization is trustworthy from top to bottom.
• Market Share. – A 2018 Oliver Wyman report suggests that, though nearly $1 trillion in market value has been created in financial services, it is largely dominated by Big Tech companies that, until recently, generated better consumer trust metrics than the financial industry. With privacy concerns on the rise in Big Tech, now is an excellent time for financial services organizations to prove they take customer security seriously, win back trust, and reclaim some of that market share. Running fingerprint-based background checks on the employees in your buildings helps build fundamental trust.

Reason 2: Hire faster and smarter

The more processes you have, the harder they become to manage and the longer they take to complete. Right now, unemployment is low, so you can’t afford to lose good candidates to long, drawn-out hiring practices. Moving to a consistent fingerprint-based process for your potential employees means you have:

• A consistent process for your employees
• A partnership with a single provider for all your identity verification and background screening needs
• A network of similar, comfortable locations for your candidates to access –— ensuring their hiring experiences are positive

Using one process also ensures that every candidate is supported equally by your screening partner through the hiring process. Pick an organization with excellent customer service, a large network of fingerprinting locations, and a stellar reputation; rest assured, you are making the process even better.

Reason 3: It’s never been easier

If you resisted fingerprinting everyone before because of the sub-optimal experience, there’s good news: it’s improved, a lot.

In the past, most fingerprinting was done in law enforcement offices by people who, though they were trained to capture good prints, may not have delivered the best customer experience. Fingerprinting done outside of law enforcement offices often tended to be in random, disparate locations like a bail bonds company or even in the back room of a restaurant. The process was quite frequently awkward and uncomfortable.

It’s different now.

Today, law enforcement is moving out of the fingerprinting business. Our support team has, for the past couple of years, seen an increase in calls from customers whose local law enforcement agencies no longer provide fingerprinting services, and entire states are following Colorado’s lead in considering legislation that removes law enforcement from non-criminal fingerprinting processes.

This move has left a rather sizeable hole in the fingerprinting market that companies have rushed to fill, and where there’s competition, there’s innovation. Most fingerprinting service organizations now offer live scan fingerprinting, which captures an electronic version of prints to send directly to the screening organization and doesn’t leave your candidates with ink-stained hands. More importantly, the competition has spurred an improvement in customer service, so your candidates wait less and get better assistance than ever before. And with customers posting Yelp and Google reviews of their fingerprinting locations, the pressure to offer quality customer service is only increasing.

So, if you haven’t looked at the fingerprinting experience in a while –— and if you’re still using the same old process you used a few years ago –— maybe it’s time you looked at what the modern, efficient fingerprinting experience is like.

What are you waiting for?

Ready to find out how easy it is to run fingerprint-based background checks on your employees? Sterling’s national fingerprinting network offers clean, well-lit, customer-friendly locations in 675+ cities in the U.S. We can handle FINRA and non-FINRA checks for you, and we can even host our state-of-the-art fingerprinting kiosk in a central location for larger organizations who need one. Have questions? We’d love to hear from you! Contact us for a customized solution that suits your needs.

Sterling is not a law firm. This publication is for informational purposes only and nothing contained in it should be construed as legal advice. We expressly disclaim any warranty or responsibility for damages arising out this information. We encourage you to consult with legal counsel regarding your specific needs. We do not undertake any duty to update previously posted materials.