During the COVID-19 pandemic, GSC experienced an uptick in fraudulent applications as prospective tenants used fake or altered pay stubs and bank statements to substantiate their income

For the apartment homes and management services provider, the increase in fraud occurred at the same time the federal government issued a temporary national moratorium on evictions for nonpayment of rent. This significantly increased GSC’s risk of approving unqualified applicants, since the process for evicting a tenant would be extended by several months. With the cost per eviction case averaging $4,000 in court filing fees, attorney fees, lost rent, and turnover costs, etc., GSC needed to find a way to quickly and accurately identify falsified or fraudulent documents to streamline the application process and avoid evictions.

For Katisha’s team, manually verifying each applicant’s employment status and income was not a practical option, given how tedious and time-consuming that process typically is. 

“Before we found a tool to help us, our agents were acting as [private investigators], researching addresses from pay stubs and credit reports and calling or emailing employers to verify a person’s employment and income,” she explains.

This outreach process often turned into a vicious cycle, eating up more time and resources as agents continuously followed up with employers and researched details within submitted documents to help them make the right decision - all the while driving up costs for GSC.  

“It’s getting harder and harder to confirm this information because some major companies like Amazon and Walmart don’t provide a local number where we can get in touch with HR,” says Katisha. “So there's no one to call; no one to speak to.”

Katisha turned to Inscribe to streamline the employment and income verification process for new applicants and quickly identify documents that needed further investigation

As part of the GSC leasing process, applicants are required to provide their two most recent pay stubs or another form of proof of employment, such as an offer letter. This documentation is used to verify that the applicant meets the income requirements for the property.

While a member of Katisha’s team reviews and ultimately approves every application, she wanted to arm her agents with a powerful tool that would quickly and accurately detect fraudulent documents or instances where real documents were altered. This would allow the team to streamline the review process for all applicants while enabling them to focus their attention on those applications that need further investigation.

With this new tool, once documents are provided by an applicant, they are then uploaded to Inscribe where they are analyzed and classified as legitimate or fraudulent. If the tool’s trust score returns a result of 75 or above, Katisha’s team will approve the applicant; for scores of 25 and below, the person will likely be rejected. For applicants that score between, Katisha’s team will contact the person’s employer to manually verify their employment and income. 

During the evaluation period, Katisha considered Inscribe, as well as several competitors. One thing that stood out to her was the responsiveness of the Inscribe team throughout the evaluation process and their willingness to extend the trial period to ensure she was satisfied with the product before moving forward.   

“We didn’t go with another vendor because the sales rep was not very responsive during the process,” explains Katisha. “I wasn't impressed with that. To me, that's an indicator that if we have an issue, I won’t be able to contact someone to have it resolved.”

Another differentiator for Inscribe was flexibility in the pricing. Inscribe calculates cost per document based on actual use, as opposed to other vendors which charge a flat fee “per door.” If pricing was based on each unit, it would mean that GSC would have to pay a fee for every property on the market (even if they did not generate any applications for the unit).

During the trial period, 11% of documents were flagged as fraudulent, resulting in a more than 160% return on investment 

With Inscribe, Katisha’s team has been able to reduce the time it takes to verify a person’s employment status and salary from days to a mere 12 seconds. The tool also provides agents with specific details about why a document is fraudulent, so they can feel confident in their decision.