How do lenders and underwriters verify bank statements?
Most start by eyeballing logos, fonts, and totals — all of which a careful forger can reproduce. The structural layer is harder to fake. So lenders increasingly add an automated file check that catches edits hiding behind a correct-looking layout: a spreadsheet rebuild, an editor re-save, a balance changed after export.
HTPBE? runs that check at scale through the API — a verdict plus the named markers behind it for every statement in an application. It is a file-integrity layer that runs alongside identity and income verification, not instead of it. Bank statement detection guide. See the API →
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How do I verify a bank statement is real?
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How do I verify a payslip or salary slip is genuine?
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Check that the net-pay maths, pay dates, and employer details are internally consistent, then look at how the file was produced. The most common forgery is a real payslip re-typed or edited in Word and exported again — which changes the producer fingerprint and the revision history HTPBE? reads.
HTPBE? tells you whether the payslip PDF was altered after it was generated. It does not confirm that the employer or the salary figure is real. That is the employer’s record to confirm, not the file’s. See fake salary slip detection →
The question has two halves. One: was the certificate PDF edited after it was issued? A changed name, grade, or date usually leaves structural traces that surface as Modified — and that is what a tamper check answers.
The other half — whether the issuing body actually awarded the certificate — no file check can answer. That lives in the registrar’s or awarding body’s records. Use HTPBE? to rule out file tampering, the issuer’s own portal to confirm the record. See fake certificate detection →
No. That is the most common myth. You don’t need a reference copy — structural analysis reads the evidence already inside the file you were sent: its revision layers, cross-reference structure, timestamps, producer fingerprint, signature state.
That is what lets HTPBE? return a verdict on a file you have never seen, from a sender you can’t reach. One question — was this file edited after it was created — answered without ever comparing it to an original. How one-sided PDF analysis works →