How It Works
Collect. Check. Review.
That is the whole shape of it. Below is the short version, and then the detail — every step that actually runs between an applicant sending a document and you closing the file.
The three stages of a verification
Collect
Send the applicant a secure request and they upload directly, or upload documents you already have.
Check
Fidem reads the relevant information out of each document and checks it for consistency within and across them.
Review
You see what matched, what needs attention, and the evidence behind each finding — then decide what to do.
In detail
Every step, start to finish
The three stages above, expanded. You do not need to know this to use Fidem — it is here because some people want to see exactly what happens to an applicant's documents.
- 01Collect· < 1 minute
Create the verification
Start a verification for the applicant. You can add your own reference number so it lines up with however you already track properties and applicants.
The verification starts as a draft and nothing is processed yet. You can add documents straight away or come back to it later.
- 02Collect· 1–2 minutes
Ask the applicant, or upload yourself
Send a secure document request by email and the applicant uploads directly to Fidem, without creating an account. If you already have the documents, upload them yourself instead.
You choose which documents to ask for: pay stubs and bank statements are required for a verification to proceed, and employment letters and government ID are optional additions that unlock further consistency checks. Either route puts files in private, access-controlled storage rather than your inbox or a shared drive. PDF, JPEG, and PNG are accepted, up to 20 MB each, and every document is tracked individually.
- 03CheckAutomated· 2–5 minutes
Information is read out and checked
Income figures, pay periods, employer details, account balances, and deposit activity come off each document, and the checks run — inside each document and across all of them.
The checks behave the same way every time: the same extracted information always produces the same result, against the same thresholds, in the same order. That is what makes two applicants comparable. Extraction itself is a different matter — reading text off a document depends on its quality and on the extraction provider, so it is not guaranteed to be identical on every run. You can watch progress from the workspace, and if a document cannot be read you can retry it or upload a replacement.
- 04CheckAutomated· Immediate after processing
Findings are assembled
The results are gathered into a report. Each finding carries its outcome, a plain explanation, and the document values behind it, grouped by category.
Categories cover income signals, employment signals, bank coverage signals, documentation signals, and cross-document consistency. Each finding is marked passed, for review, unable to evaluate, or not evaluated — so a check that could not run is visibly distinct from one that ran and found nothing wrong.
- 05Review· Whenever you're ready
Start your review
When the report is available, start an internal review. The verification workspace shows the full report alongside the review workflow panel. You can navigate between findings, evidence, and your review notes.
Starting the review changes the verification's status to "In Review" and records the event in the activity log. You can add internal notes at any point during the review.
- 06Review
Ask for more, if you need it
If something in the findings needs another document before you can close it out, mark the verification as needing additional documentation. The request is recorded, and you can send the applicant a fresh secure request.
The verification status changes to "Additional Documentation Needed". When documentation is received, you can resume the review. Additional documents can be uploaded to the same verification workflow.
- 07Review
Close it out
When your review is finished, mark the verification review as complete. You can optionally add a closing note. The completion event is recorded in the activity log.
A completed review produces a full activity record: all uploaded documents, processing events, verification report, review notes, and the completion event. This record is available for future reference.
What you end up with — and what you do not
You end up with findings you can act on, the document values behind each one, and a dated record of what happened.
What you do not get, because Fidem does not do it: credit scores, background checks, eviction histories, or confirmation from an employer or a bank. Fidem works from what the applicant submits. It does not contact anyone, connect to payroll systems, or check a document against the institution that issued it.
That distinction matters. Fidem can tell you that two documents disagree, or that a figure does not fit a stated pay frequency. It cannot tell you that a document is genuine, and a government ID is treated the same way as every other document — its details are read and compared, not checked with the agency that issued it, so nothing here establishes that an applicant is who they say they are. Fidem also does not tell you what to do about an applicant. That decision is yours.
See what the findings look like
A full sample report, built from the same components you would see in the app — findings, evidence, and all.