And the fix is often one email.
If you asked most CFOs who controls employment verification costs, they would probably say HR.
That answer makes sense. Conducting employment verifications happens during hiring. It shows up on background check invoices. HR manages the vendor relationship.
But financially, CFOs control more of this than they realize.
Employment verification is a roughly $3 billion annual spend in the United States, and in many companies it is one of the easiest hiring costs to reduce, because the expense is rarely managed intentionally.
The cost that hides inside invoices
Employment verification rarely appears as a clean line item. It is usually buried inside background check invoices, bundled with criminal searches, drug testing, and administrative fees.
Because it is treated as a pass-through charge, it rarely gets audited independently. Finance assumes it is a fixed expense. HR assumes the costs are out of their control.
Over time, both these assumptions become expensive.
Why fees drifted without anyone noticing
Outsourcing employment verification originally made sense. Decades ago, HR teams were flooded with phone calls and fax requests. Offloading that work reduced friction and internal cost.
What changed was pricing.
Employment verifications that once cost single digits now routinely show up at $75, $100, sometimes more. That did not happen because the work became harder. It happened because most employers never put intentional routing rules in place.
Here is the key point.
In most cases, employment verification fees are pass-through fees. They are not an expense to the background check company. When no one gives direction, there is no incentive for the background check company to optimize cost.
The leverage point almost no one uses
Employers can dictate how employment verifications are routed without changing their background check company, contracts, or workflows.
HR can instruct the background check company to route employment verifications through a preferred source first. If a verification cannot be completed that way, the existing process becomes the fallback.
That one instruction is often enough to reduce employment verification costs by 50 to 70 percent.
Nothing operational changes.
Nothing compliance-related changes.
The background check company stays the same.
Only the routing changes.
Why MyEmployment is built for that first route
MyEmployment provides a flat $29 verification with our no hit / no fee guarantee.
But the bigger point is how the system completes verifications reliably without forcing employees into a single brittle workflow.
MyEmployment has over 300,000 employer API connections and integrations with 85 of the nation’s largest HRIS and payroll systems. Those connections help, but they are not the only driver of completion.
The higher completion rate comes from a dual-path, triangulated workflow designed to remove the biggest failure point in consumer-permissioned models: requiring employees to remember payroll credentials.
Most competitors rely heavily on payroll logins. That produces 20 to 30 percent completion rates because people do not remember payroll usernames or passwords, especially for past employers. In reality, most employees set up direct deposit once and never log in again.
MyEmployment works differently.
Applicants can complete verifications using a bank account connection alone, because payroll deposits are a primary source of truth for employment and income. The system analyzes deposit source, frequency, continuity, and employer identifiers to verify employment directly from primary data.
If a bank connection is not sufficient, the system routes the applicant to the next best option:
- Employer search using known identifiers
- Payroll provider connection using flexible identifiers
- Additional direct-source connections if needed
Key points that matter to CFOs and compliance teams:
- This is not paystub or tax document uploads
- Credentials are not stored
- Verification is completed directly from primary sources
- Fewer required steps equals higher completion
The practical outcome is simple. When your background check company routes verifications through MyEmployment first, you are typically replacing high-cost pass-through verifications with a flat $29 outcome when the verification completes. If it cannot complete, the old process remains as the fallback.
The secondary point CFOs tend to overlook
CFOs look at this category as spend. That is the right starting point.
But remember, CFOs are employees too.
Employment and income data gets accessed during mortgages, rentals, and credit decisions. In traditional systems, employees often have limited visibility into when their data is accessed and by whom.
MyEmployment is designed to bring employees back into the loop with real-time awareness and control. Employees can be notified at the time of request and can approve or deny requests, or set global preferences. For example, always allow mortgage companies, always deny debt collection related requests.
This is not the primary reason CFOs start the conversation. But it is often the reason they stick with the decision once they internalize it.
The email that actually moves this forward
Here is a simple email several executives have used to implement routing without disruption.
Subject: Employment verification routing trial
Dear [Background Check Company Contact],
We have had discussions with a company called MyEmployment that offers employment verification coverage across more than 300,000 employer API connections and integrations with 85 of the nation’s largest HRIS and payroll systems.
Their employment verifications are $29 flat, no hit/ no fee guarantee.
I would like you to reach out to them, reference our company, and set up a 90 day trial where all new hire employment verifications are routed through MyEmployment first. If a verification cannot be completed, you can fall back to your existing process.
At the end of the trial, please provide a short report showing completion rates and total cost savings.
My understanding is that this will not create operational burden and that their SOC 2 certified platform integrates cleanly with most background screening systems while maintaining full compliance.
Please let me know if there are any issues or delays in implementing this or in reducing our employment verification pass-through fees.
Thank you,
[Name]
Final thought
Most CFOs do not need a new background check company to fix this.
They need visibility into a $3 billion category that has been allowed to run on autopilot.
One routing instruction is often enough to cut costs dramatically, while moving the company toward a more transparent model for employees at the same time.