Credas said pass rates for digital identity verification checks have risen to 89.3%, while the share of cases requiring manual review has fallen to between 3% and 4% a year.
Data from millions of checks between 2023 and 2026 showed pass rates increasing from 86.1% in 2023 to 89.3% on a year-to-date basis in 2026. Over the same period, referral rates, where a case is sent for additional manual review, fell from 9.1% to between 3% and 4% annually.
The figures come amid continued concern over identity fraud in the UK. Credas cited the latest Fraudscape report, which found that identity fraud accounted for 54% of all recorded fraud cases.
Fail rates moved unevenly over the period. They rose from 4.8% in 2023 to 8.6% in 2024, before easing to 6.9% on a year-to-date basis in 2026.
The pattern suggests a larger share of checks are ending in either a pass or a fail, rather than being escalated for human intervention. That matters for businesses using digital checks in customer onboarding and compliance procedures, particularly in sectors where speed and auditability both matter.
Document mix
Most identity checks in the dataset relied on a narrow set of documents. Passports and driving licences together accounted for about 99% of all submissions, reflecting the continued dominance of standardised, government-issued identification in digital verification.
That concentration is especially relevant in regulated markets such as property and legal services, where firms often need to verify clients remotely while meeting anti-money laundering and know-your-customer obligations. Credas verifies more than four million individuals a year for legal, property and business professionals.
Founded in Cardiff in 2016, the company provides remote identity verification and due diligence software. It said the latest figures suggest digital verification tools are producing more decisive outcomes, reducing the need for manual intervention while still filtering out suspect applications.
For companies using these systems, manual referrals can add labour costs and delay account opening or case progression. A lower referral rate can therefore improve operational efficiency, although fail rates remain an important measure because tighter checks can also increase the number of rejected applications.
In Credas's data, the rise in fail rates in 2024, followed by a decline in 2026, suggests the balance between automation and decision accuracy is still shifting. Even so, the reduction in referrals indicates fewer cases are falling into a grey area that requires staff review.
Rhian Del-Valle, Director of Enterprise Partnerships at Credas, said: "The drop in manual referrals from 9.1% to 3-4% represents a significant shift in how digital verification performs. Manual reviews create delays and operational overhead, so seeing referrals fall by more than half whilst pass rates improve demonstrates real progress in the technology. It shows you can reduce friction without compromising on fraud detection - which is essential when identity fraud remains such a persistent threat."
Credas said the trend reflects broader improvement in digital identity verification at a time when businesses are under pressure to make onboarding simpler without weakening fraud checks.