What does Cifas-adjacent mortgage fraud screening cover?

Cifas (the UK Fraud Prevention Service) maintains the National Fraud Database — a shared pool of fraud cases contributed by member organisations (banks, lenders, insurance companies, telecoms). Membership is mandatory for some regulated industries + opt-in for others. Members can query the database against new applications + flag fraudulent cases for inclusion.

'Cifas-adjacent' screening typically refers to checks against the same patterns Cifas tracks, even when the firm isn't a Cifas member directly. For mortgage fraud specifically, the patterns include:

1. **Known fraudster individuals.** People previously confirmed-fraudulent on a mortgage application (false income, fake employment, identity theft, etc).

2. **Applicant fraud markers.** Identity verification flags (mismatched address history, suspicious DOB patterns, recent dramatic change of name); financial behaviour markers (unusual deposit sources, inconsistent income vs lifestyle, prior bankruptcy not disclosed).

3. **Previously-fraudulent property addresses.** Properties where prior mortgage fraud (overvaluation, false vendor, shell-company laundering) has been recorded.

4. **Synthetic identities.** New 'identities' built from real PII fragments combined with fabricated elements — typically the hardest pattern to catch without access to a shared fraud database.

For lenders not directly Cifas-member: pair the FCA Verification API (broker authorisation), the sanctions + PEP screening, and the Companies House watch (corporate vendor scrutiny) for a defensive posture against the obvious fraud patterns. The Cifas-direct check requires Cifas membership; we don't currently surface it as a Stratum capability.

The Stratum lender-broker-panel-monitoring landing page covers the broker-side checks; the conveyancer-suite endpoint covers the buyer + seller side; the business-risk endpoint covers the corporate-vendor side.

Source: Cifas

Last updated 2026-05-06.