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Article
The realities of Bank Statement Processing in 2025
Every day, financial services teams handle mountains of documents, and bank statements are often among the most painful.
Verifying income has always been central to onboarding and credit decisioning in financial services. But when it comes to self-employed individuals, the task becomes significantly more complex. Income streams are often irregular, documents vary in format, and traditional checks don’t always provide the full picture.
This challenge is only becoming more pressing. Self-employment is rising across the UK and Europe, with contractors, freelancers, sole traders, and small business owners making up an increasingly large share of the workforce. For lenders, brokers, and other financial institutions, serving this segment confidently is both a necessity and an opportunity.
At Sikoia, we already support the full spectrum of self-employed income verification. By combining Open Banking data, bank statement uploads, and SA302s or tax returns, our platform delivers a holistic, reliable picture of a customer’s income profile - while reducing friction for the customer.
Robust verification protects against overstated or misrepresented income, helping lenders manage risk. It also ensures regulatory compliance, with KYC, AML, and Consumer Duty obligations requiring accuracy and transparency in customer data. Just as importantly, a smooth verification process improves the customer experience. Lengthy or confusing checks often drive applicants away, while streamlined ones build trust and increase conversion.
Our platform integrates multiple income sources into a single view, automatically processes them, runs integrity checks to flag inconsistencies or signs of tampering, and cross-references data to strengthen confidence in the outcome.
Together, these sources are parsed, cross-checked for consistency, and screened for fraud or tampering. The result is a trusted, auditable output that compliance, risk, and underwriting teams can rely on.
For financial institutions, this means faster and more accurate decisions, fewer manual reviews, stronger fraud prevention, and seamless audit trails. For self-employed customers, it translates into less back-and-forth, quicker onboarding, and the ability to demonstrate income fairly and clearly.
As self-employment continues to grow, effective income verification is no longer optional. Sikoia equips financial institutions with the tools to balance compliance, risk management, and customer experience - helping them serve an expanding and increasingly important customer base.
Want to see how Sikoia’s income verification can work in your processes? Get in touch with our team today.
Sikoia Ltd is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Account Information Service Provider (AISP) under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 (FRN: 942979) and as a credit reference provider (FRN: 942616). Sikoia Ltd is a credit broker and not a lender. Credit is subject to status.
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