First Advantage reduces verification spend by $XXXK annually with Truv

Overview

Founded in 2003, First Advantage is a leading global provider of employment background screening, identity, and compliance solutions. As the #2 full-service employment background screening provider by market share and customer base, First Advantage serves organizations worldwide with innovative technology and comprehensive services. The company reported approximately $860.2 million in revenue for 2024 (announced in February 2025).

Servicing 80K+ organizations across a wide range of industries and 190M screens annually, First Advantage was recognized by Newsweek as one of the World's Most Trustworthy Companies for 2025, helping organizations make informed hiring decisions by delivering accurate, compliant, and timely screening results at scale.

Challenge

As a global background screening provider, First Advantage processes high volumes of employment verifications across a diverse client base. Traditional verification methods created several challenges:

• Rising costs: As employment verification volume grew, the cost of traditional providers escalated, year over year.
• Slow turnaround times: Manual outreach to employers via phone and email introduced delays, with HR teams often unresponsive or providing incomplete information.
• Fraud risk: Reliance on candidate-uploaded documents, including pay stubs and employment letters, increased exposure to falsified, tampered, and/or altered records.
• Disjointed candidate experience: Multiple touch points, long wait times, and fragmented workflows led to friction during the background screening process.
• Scalability constraints: Manual processes were not built to scale efficiently with growing client volumes or new business acquisitions.

Solution

First Advantage partnered with Truv to modernize and scale its employment verification processes, embedding Truv's solutions seamlessly into their screening workflow. Truv was implemented as part of a strategic, phased rollout that aligned with First Advantage's broader verification methodology and change-management approach, socializing the concept with internal thought leaders and visionaries first.

Understanding that revolutionary tools often face initial skepticism, they deployed a phased rollout that demonstrated early wins, allowing success to build organizational confidence. With Truv, First Advantage gained:

• Intuitive candidate experience: With Truv's white-labeled solution, First Advantage provides a faster, more modern verification of employment (VOE) process that strengthens their brand and client retention. Recognizing that the user experience is at the core of their client relationships, they have made the candidate journey their cornerstone, leveraging Truv's intuitive platform to power verifications that improve the screening experience.
• Built-in fraud detection with document fallback: If payroll connectivity is not feasible, candidates are prompted to upload employment documents within the same seamless experience, eliminating the need for time-consuming phone calls and emails that previously slowed the process down by days or weeks. To minimize risk of fraud with uploaded documents, Truv's AI-driven fraud detection feature flags any signs of suspicious documents, enabling real-time resolution.
• Scalable integration: Unlike traditional manual processes that posed limitations to scale efficiently with client volume, Truv's platform scales seamlessly alongside First Advantage's client growth, streamlining onboarding across First Advantage's expanding family of companies.
• Future-proof verification infrastructure: With Truv, First Advantage is equipped to serve clients across any industry aligned with workforce trends, without the constraints of outdated verification methods. Truv's platform is continuously evolving with additional employer and payroll integrations to expand coverage that automatically adapts to emerging work types, including gig economy workers, contractors, and non-traditional employment.

Outcomes

At a glance:

Since adopting Truv, First Advantage has seen meaningful improvements across operational efficiency, data quality, and candidate satisfaction:

$XXXK Annual Savings Over Instant VOE Solutions

Strategically prioritizing Truv's automated verification in front of traditional verification methods has resulted in an estimated $XXX,XXX annual savings for First Advantage, dramatically reducing employment verification costs.

Streamlined <30 Second Candidate Experience

With user experience as a top priority for First Advantage when selecting a consumer-permissioned VOE solution, Truv delivered an intuitive, reliable, and easy-to-understand workflow that simplifies employment verification for candidates. With Truv, candidates no longer need to track down documents or wait on employer responses—resulting in faster background checks and higher satisfaction.

Operational Efficiency & Accelerated Processing From Weeks to Same-Day

Truv replaced manual, error-prone verification methods with automated workflows that reduce verification wait times from days or weeks to seconds. By eliminating manual outreach to employers and HR departments and leveraging instant reporting from direct-to-source data connections, Truv provides scalable automation that supports growth without increasing headcount, allowing teams to process significantly higher volumes with the same resources.

XX% Reduction in Fraudulent Documents

With Truv's AI-driven fraud detection built-in to the Document Upload solution, First Advantage minimized human-in-the-loop document review processes, removing the risk of forged, altered, or fake documents that are inherent and increasingly present with manual verification processes. With a 99.99% detection rate, Truv's solution helped First Advantage flag fraudulent documents by XX%.

56% Login Conversion Rate

First Advantage achieved a post-login conversion rate exceeding 56% with Truv - a dramatic improvement over traditional verification methods, demonstrating that candidates are enabled to easily connect payroll and employer accounts for VOEs without the friction of phone calls, emails, or high-volume document uploads. This high conversion rate means fewer manual fallbacks, faster case resolution, and a better experience for candidates navigating the background screening process.

Custom Built Implementation in Under 4-5 Months

First Advantage partnered closely with Truv's team to launch a custom-built integration tailored to its client workflows in less than 4-5 months. This rapid deployment accelerated time-to-value and demonstrated Truv's ability to implement at scale, while Truv's API-first solution enables First Advantage to seamlessly integrate employment verification across its growing portfolio of brands and clients.

White-Glove Partnership With Multi-Year Support

From day one, Truv provided hands-on implementation support, adoption strategy, and comprehensive metrics and reporting that allowed First Advantage to demonstrate value to clients, track success rates, and identify opportunities for optimization. To ensure success, Truv:

• Rapidly launched a custom-built implementation
• Built custom features tailored to First Advantage client needs
• Delivered responsive support times for escalations
• Developed a conversion-optimized candidate experience
• Customized educational materials to drive internal and candidate adoption
• Launched continuous performance improvements over the multi-year implementation
• Expanded employer coverage to increase successful connections for more candidates

Conclusion

Background screening organizations operating at scale face a common challenge: balancing speed, accuracy, and candidate experience while managing costs. First Advantage's partnership with Truv demonstrates that these goals are not competing priorities - they are complementary when powered by the right technology.

The key takeaway? Scalable screening requires scalable solutions. Automating VOEs from consumer-permissioned data is not just about eliminating manual work or costs; it is about relying on infrastructure that grows with your business, delivers consistent results, and transforms what is often a frustrating process into a seamless experience for candidates.

About First Advantage

First Advantage (NASDAQ: FA) is a leading provider of global software and data in the HR technology industry. Enabled by its proprietary technology and AI, First Advantage's platforms, data, and APIs power comprehensive employment background screening, digital identity solutions, and verification services.

With a strong emphasis on innovation, automation, and customer success, First Advantage empowers 80,000 organizations to hire smarter and onboard faster. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, First Advantage serves customers in over 200 countries and territories, modernizing hiring and onboarding on a global scale. For more information, please visit our website at https://fadv.com/

About Truv

Truv empowers 150+ lenders to instantly verify income, employment, and asset data directly from the source. With best-in-class coverage, configurable workflows, and a focus on consumer-permissioned data, Truv helps financial institutions streamline underwriting while dramatically reducing costs. Truv's full suite of solutions provides GSE-eligible reports for submission to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, protecting lenders from buyback risks and delivering market-leading data quality. Learn more at truv.com