London, 4th November 2026 – Credit reference agency Equifax UK has entered a strategic data partnership with The Access Group, a leading software and payroll provider, to help make income and employment verification faster, simpler and more secure for Access customers and their employees.

The partnership means that employees of organisations using The Access Group payroll software can now verify their income and employment status instantly and digitally, without the need to chase payslips, contact HR teams, or submit paper documents when applying for financial products such as mortgages, loans or credit cards.

Putting employees in control

Previously, employees of organisations using The Access Group typically had to request payslips from their employer's HR team, compile documents manually and wait for lenders to process them, adding friction and delay at critical moments.

Through this partnership, Equifax significantly reduces that friction, replacing the process of tracking down manual paperwork with a secure, instant digital journey. When employees of The Access Group clients apply for a financial product that requires income or employment verification, they are given the option to share their information digitally and instantly, directly from source, with their explicit consent, rather than gathering documents themselves.

Key benefits for employers and their employees include:

• For employees: Fast, friction-free financial applications with zero paperwork, no chasing HR, and total control over personal data.

• For HR and payroll teams: Automated processing that eliminates manual requests for payslips and employment letters.

• For employers: A high-value workforce perk that supports financial wellbeing during major life moments.

• For lenders: Direct-from-source, highly secure data that enables faster, safer, and more responsible lending decisions.
   

Kristina Burwood-Ansell, Director of Consumer Products at Equifax UK, said: “This partnership with The Access Group supports our commitment to ensuring that UK consumers and lenders can access the information they need in a friction-free way while helping to reduce the administrative burden for employers. By providing over a million employee records for instant verification, we accelerate the application process and provide the certainty and security that lenders need to make responsible decisions, faster. It also reinforces how the broader Income Verification suite is a leading ecosystem for instant data verification.”

Charles Butterworth, Managing Director of People Division at The Access Group, said: “Our customers trust us to help them run their payroll efficiently, and that relationship extends to the employees whose pay we process. We chose to partner with Equifax because of their established global leadership in verification services and extensive network of lending clients. It enables us to offer something genuinely valuable to those employees: the ability to verify their income and employment instantly, at the moment it matters most, without any of the usual hassle. It's a natural extension of what we do, and we're proud to be making a real difference to people's financial lives.”