Veriv acquires bankVOD to unify financial verification

Veriv has launched a financial verification platform and acquired bankVOD, also known as BVOD Solutions, LLC, in its first acquisition. The combined business will focus on financial verification across mortgage and lending, commercial audit and government eligibility workflows.

US-based Veriv operates from the US and the UK and is backed by Renvent Holdings and Sunriver Capital Partners. The company is building on a network spanning more than 70 countries. Financial terms of the bankVOD acquisition were not disclosed.

Veriv combines bankVOD relationships with verification technology

bankVOD has spent around two decades providing verification services to financial institutions, mortgage lenders, accounting firms and government agencies. Its business includes direct institutional connections and established relationships with both organisations requesting verification and those responding to requests.

Veriv plans to combine those relationships with its patent-pending adaptive delivery technology. The aim is to create a verification network that can scale across industries, regulated environments and geographies.

The acquisition gives Veriv an existing base of requestors and responders from launch, rather than requiring the company to build those institutional connections from the beginning.

Platform targets fragmented verification workflows

The companies describe financial verification as a fragmented part of the financial infrastructure. Despite broader digitisation, workflows across lending, consumer verification and government programmes still depend in part on manual processes.

According to Veriv, these processes can introduce operational delays, additional risk and administrative burden. The platform is intended to bring more of those workflows into a common verification layer.

Mortgage verification remains a core use case

Mortgage lenders have used bankVOD for verification of deposit. Veriv plans to extend this relationship by offering lenders a single connection for a broader range of loan file requirements.

These use cases include quality control, re-verification and verification of income, employment and assets. Outside mortgage and lending, the combined network also supports commercial audit confirmations and government income verification.

Automation increases the importance of trusted data

Veriv is positioning the platform as institutions increasingly automate financial decisions while facing growing fraud pressure and changing regulatory requirements. The company argues that automation increases the importance of the quality, provenance and reliability of the data used in verification.

Sean Dunlea, CEO of Veriv and co-founder of bankVOD, said bankVOD has spent 20 years building trust with requestors, responders and their customers. He said Veriv is bringing previously separate verification workflows together on one network designed to scale across industries and regulated environments.

Investors see verification becoming infrastructure

Renvent Holdings and Sunriver Capital Partners bring experience across financial services, mortgage, payments, transaction infrastructure and technology-enabled business services. Renvent's portfolio includes The Mortgage Office and KensieMae, while Sunriver has invested in Vero and Deposify.

Tom Friel, Managing Partner of Renvent Holdings, said financial verification is becoming infrastructure as more financial decisions are automated. He also pointed to the growing value of reliable and well-sourced data and the opportunity for Veriv to connect institutions directly with trusted data sources.

The combined company plans to begin with markets where bankVOD has already established institutional credibility while expanding the platform across additional verification workflows and sectors.