Using Open Banking is the most reliable way of verifying a person’s income because it allows us to quickly view the relevant incoming transactions from a person's bank account and verify that they are legitimate.
Other income verification methods, such as contacting referees or providing bank statements, are significantly slower, less secure and more intrusive than Open Banking because they may need to be manually reviewed, are susceptible to fraud, and often require unrelated information (such as outgoing transactions) to be shared.
That said, when completing a reference, applicants are welcome to opt out of using Open Banking if they strongly prefer not to verify their income in this manner. If they do so, we will request a suitable referee from them that we will contact to verify their income instead.