Overview
Identity Validation checks your client's name, date of birth, and address against third-party data sources — including credit agencies, the electoral roll, and telephone databases. The result of this check shows as Clear, Consider, or N/A in your CDD report.
ℹ️ Further guidance
For an overview of all CDD report sections and result statuses, see Understanding your CDD report.
Which sources are checked
The following sources may be used during identity validation. The sources applied depend on the client's country of address — not all sources are used for every client.
Credit Agencies — Data comprised of consumer credit applications
Voting Register — Data comprised of voter registration within a country
Telephone Database — Data provided by both landline and mobile providers
Government — Any standard publicly accessible data collected by government entities. These include driver's licence data, motor vehicle registration, court filings, property ownership registers, permanent place of residence registration and other similar datasets
Business Registration — Data comprised of business registrations, corporate directors filings and business hierarchy data
Consumer Database — Opt-in consumer data leveraging database marketing and other similar opt-in data sources
Utility Registration — Data comprised of utility registrations such as electricity, gas, water accounts
Postal Authorities — Data provided by postal authorities
Commercial Database — Corporate or private databases where users have opted in and allowed their information to be used for the purpose of identity verification
Proprietary — Used when a data provider does not divulge the source of the data. This also includes social media-based data
Register of Deaths — A negative source used to check for known deaths (UK only)
What a Clear result requires
UK client address
A Clear result is returned when all of the following thresholds are met:
The client is not found on a register of deaths
Name and address are confirmed across at least two independent sources (such as credit agencies, the voting register, or telephone databases)
Date of birth is corroborated by at least one source
Not every sub-check within the breakdown needs to match. A Clear result can still be returned provided the minimum thresholds are met across the Sources, Mortality, Address, and Date of Birth breakdowns — even if individual databases do not all return a match.
How a Consider result is broken down
ℹ️ Further guidance
For a full breakdown of what causes a Consider result and the recommended next steps, see Understanding a "Consider" result in a CDD report.
UK client address
Sources — confirms whether at least one source returned a match. Returns a Consider if no match is found. The Number of Sources field shows how many different sources returned matches
Mortality — confirms whether the client was found on a mortality list. Returns Clear if no match is found
Address — confirms whether at least one name and address match was found. Returns a Consider if no match is found
Voting Register — asserts whether at least one name and address match was found on a Voting Register data source
Credit Agencies — asserts whether at least one name and address match was found on a Credit Agency source. A Number of Matches property shows the number of Credit Agency address matches
Telephone Database — asserts whether at least one name and address match was found on a Telephone Database source
Date of Birth — asserts whether at least one name and date of birth match was found. Returns a Consider if no match is found
Credit Agencies — asserts whether at least one name and date of birth match was found on a Credit Agency source
Voting Register — asserts whether at least one name and date of birth match was found on a Voting Register source
N/A results
An N/A result means the Identity Validation check could not be run. This typically occurs when the client has a non-UK address. In these cases, Legl automatically prompts the client to upload a supporting document for manual review.
ℹ️ Further guidance
For more detail on N/A results and what to do next, see Understanding an N/A result in a CDD report.
Important information
A Consider result does not mean the client has failed identity verification. It means one or more criteria were not fully met and your firm's risk-based approach determines what action to take.
Identity Validation results may vary for clients who have recently moved address or have limited coverage across the data sources used.
For a Consider result, check the sub-check breakdown in the report to understand which specific criterion was not met.
Not all sources are used for every client — the sources applied depend on the client's country of address.
The Register of Deaths is a UK-only source and is used as a negative check only.