One of Sweden’s largest newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, recently reported on a mortgage fraud case where warehouse workers and preschool cooks appeared in loan applications as finance directors, architects and IT managers. Similar cases have been reported in Swedish media before.

The problem with relying on manual payslips and employment documents comes down to two things: they are increasingly easy to manipulate with today's technology, and they do not show the full continuity of an applicant's income.

Two fundamental weaknesses

“A manual payslip can be manipulated in seconds with today’s technology. What is much harder to manipulate is a consistent income history verified through data from both Skatteverket and the bank account. That’s the difference between checking a document and verifying the income behind it", says Malin Önnby, CEO of Kreditz.

An employment contract or payslip tells you what someone is supposed to earn. But it cannot independently answer two important questions:

• Was the income actually received?

• Has that income been received consistently over time?

That is where modern income verification needs to go beyond documents.

The power of multiple data sources

Kreditz combines real-time data from Skatteverket with PSD2 bank account data. This allows lenders to compare what has been officially reported with what has actually been received in the applicant’s bank account, while also analysing income patterns over time.

This matters because even reported income does not always tell the full story.

We are seeing cases where a fabricated salary is reported to Skatteverket, paid into an account, and withdrawn shortly afterwards. A manual payslip was never designed to reveal that pattern. Looking at multiple independent data sources makes it far easier to identify.

By combining PSD2 and Skatteverket data, lenders gain a much clearer picture of whether an income is genuine, recurring and stable enough to support a lending decision.

Better verification, better decisions

As fraudsters gain access to increasingly sophisticated technology, verification processes need to evolve as well.

Real-time income verification helps lenders move away from manual document reviews and toward data-driven verification. The result is not only stronger fraud prevention, but also greater efficiency and a better customer experience.

“This isn’t a future solution. It’s already live and established with several Swedish banks. By combining real-time data from PSD2 and Skatteverket, we can help reduce fraud and credit risk while removing manual steps from the bank’s process. That means more efficient verification for lenders and a faster, smoother experience for customers”, says Malin Önnby.

Verification beats documentation

The future of income verification is not about collecting more documents. It is about verifying information through multiple independent data sources and understanding income patterns over time.

When banks can connect reported income with actual account behaviour, they move from static document checks to continuous, evidence-based verification, and making fraud harder, decisions faster, and lending fundamentally more reliable.

“Fraudsters only need a document to look convincing for a moment. Lenders need confidence that the income behind a credit decision is real,” says Malin Önnby.

Because when the decision is real, the data behind it should be real too.