Cleaner account opening
An inline check at onboarding rejects decedent identities before an account number is ever issued.
Banking & Credit Unions
Catch decedent account fraud before the funds move
Deceased-identity abuse concentrates in the weeks right after death, exactly the window where federal death files are still silent. Screening every application and periodically re-screening your book closes it.
7 DaysTo record a deathVersus the one-to-three month lag most institutions work with today.
InlineAt account openingFast enough to run in the live onboarding decision path.
NightlyPortfolio re-screeningContinuous surveillance across your entire customer book.
The exposure
What goes wrong without current deceased data
Every one of these failures traces back to the same root cause: the death happened weeks before the data you screen against reflected it.
- New accounts opened with a recently deceased customer's identity pass legacy KYC checks cleanly
- Dormant accounts are drained during the gap between date of death and probate notification
- Federal file lag means the death is confirmed only after the loss has already been booked
- Escheatment and dormancy reviews depend on stale deceased data
The outcome
What changes for banks & credit unions
Continuous book monitoring
Enrol your existing customer file once and get alerted the moment an accountholder matches.
Accurate dormancy handling
Distinguish genuinely dormant accounts from decedent accounts before escheatment deadlines.
Evidence for examiners
Timestamped verification records support your BSA/AML and internal audit documentation.
Where it fits in a bank's stack
Most institutions call the verification endpoint at two points: inline during digital account opening, and as a nightly or weekly batch across the existing customer file. The inline call returns in well under a second so it sits comfortably inside an onboarding decision, while the batch run feeds an exception queue your fraud and operations teams work the next morning.
The flow
From identity to decision
STEP 01
Send the identity
Post the name, date of birth and any combination of SSN or last known address to our verification endpoint, or upload a batch file through the dashboard.
STEP 02
We match against the live index
The identity is scored against our continuously refreshed nationwide deceased index, built from source records rather than downstream aggregators.
STEP 03
Get a decision-ready verdict
You receive a clear deceased / not-found verdict, a confidence score, the date of death where available and a reference ID you can store for audit.
STEP 04
Act before the loss
Block the application, freeze the account, pause the benefit payment or route to manual review, all before funds move and while recovery is still possible.
FAQ
Banks & Credit Unions questions, answered
Frequently asked questions
How does this differ from the death screening already in our KYC vendor's stack?
Most KYC and identity vendors resell a downstream copy of the Social Security Administration's Death Master File, which typically reflects a death one to three months after it occurs. We source decedent records directly from state and local jurisdictions, so a death normally appears in our index within about a week. If your current provider is built on the DMF, you are effectively blind during the highest-risk window.
Can we screen our entire existing member file, not just new applications?
Yes. Batch verification accepts up to 10,000 identities per request and is designed for full-portfolio runs. Many institutions do an initial full-book screen, then move to continuous monitoring where we push a webhook whenever an enrolled identity matches a newly published record.
What does the response tell our fraud analysts?
Each result includes a deceased or not-found verdict, a confidence score, the specific fields that matched, the date of death where available and the age of the underlying record. That lets your team triage confidently rather than manually re-verifying every alert.
Is a real-time check fast enough for digital account opening?
Median response time is under 300 milliseconds, which is well inside the budget of a typical onboarding decision engine. The API is also idempotent and retry-safe, so transient network issues never duplicate a verification or double-bill you.
Other sectors
Death verification in adjacent industries
Lenders & Credit IssuersDecline decedent applications at the point of decisionInsurance CarriersValidate every claim against a current death indexGovernment & Public AgenciesStop improper payments before the next disbursementPension & Retirement FundsDetect deceased annuitants before the next payment runEmployers & HR ScreeningCatch stolen identities at onboarding, not at auditHealthcare & PharmacyProtect patient records from posthumous misuse
Close the gap for your banks & credit unions workflow
Share your use case and expected volume and we will issue sandbox credentials so your team can build and certify the integration before contracting.
