What is field investigation (FI) in lending? Types, process and TAT explained
Field investigation (FI) — also called contact point verification (CPV) — is the physical check a lender performs before disbursing a loan: an officer visits the applicant's home or business, confirms the person and the address are real, observes the living or business conditions, and files a report with photographs. It is one of the oldest fraud controls in Indian retail lending, and one of the least modernised.
This guide explains what FI covers, the four common verification types, how a case actually moves from the lender's loan origination system to a field officer's phone and back, and what turnaround time (TAT) you should expect from a well-run verification programme.
Why do lenders order field investigations?
Lenders order FI to confirm that the person, the address and the stated income activity behind a loan application physically exist — because application documents alone are easy to fabricate. A field visit catches problems no bureau pull or document check can: an address that turns out to be a vacant plot, a "business" that is a locked shutter, a neighbour who has never heard of the applicant, or an applicant who is hostile the moment verification is mentioned.
- Fraud prevention: fabricated addresses, impersonation and ghost businesses are cheapest to catch before disbursal, not in collections.
- Credit quality: the field report adds context underwriting cannot see — locality class, ease of locating the address, house type, visible stock and staff at a business.
- Regulatory hygiene: physical verification supports KYC and know-your-borrower expectations, and the report becomes part of the loan file for audits.
- Collections readiness: a verified, precisely described address is an asset the day an account rolls into delinquency.
What are the types of field verification: RV, BV, TV and LV?
Most Indian lenders work with four standard verification types, ordered singly or in combination depending on the loan product. A used-car loan may need only residence verification, while a business loan typically pairs residence and business checks.
| Code | Name | What the officer verifies |
|---|---|---|
| RV | Residence verification | Applicant lives at the stated address: identity, ownership/rental status, years at address, house type and locality, neighbour confirmation, photographs of the gate, door and address proof. |
| BV | Business verification | The business exists and operates: signboard, premises, visible stock and activity, staff count, years in operation, neighbouring establishment confirmation. |
| TV | Tele-verification | Telephonic confirmation of the applicant and references — often a precursor or companion to a physical visit. |
| LV | Loan / asset verification | The financed asset or end-use: the vehicle, machinery or property the loan is against, matched to invoices and registration. |
Above these sit fraud-focused checks — FCU (fraud containment unit) and RCU (risk containment unit) verifications — ordered when documents look suspicious or when sampling policy demands it. These go deeper: document authenticity, cross-checks with issuing offices, and pattern checks such as the same address appearing across multiple recent applications.
How does the field investigation process work, step by step?
A field investigation moves through six stages, from the lender's trigger to the delivered report. In a traditional setup this is coordinated over spreadsheets, phone calls and WhatsApp; in a managed marketplace the same stages run as a tracked, auditable workflow.
- 1Case creation: the lender's credit or operations team raises the FI with applicant details, visit address, loan product and the verification types required — manually, by file upload, or via API from the loan origination system.
- 2Allocation: the case routes to a verification agency that covers the pincode, and the agency assigns a field officer for the area.
- 3Field visit: the officer locates the address, meets the applicant or family/neighbours, completes the product-specific questionnaire, and captures geo-tagged photographs of the premises.
- 4Officer submission: answers, photos, GPS coordinates and remarks are submitted from the field — same day for local addresses.
- 5Agency quality check: the agency's back office reviews the submission for completeness and consistency before it reaches the lender; weak submissions go back for a re-visit.
- 6Delivery and review: the lender receives the final report with an outcome — positive, negative or refer — reviews it against the credit file, and accepts it or requests rework.
What is a good TAT for field verification in India?
A good field-verification TAT is 24–48 working hours for addresses within a city and 48–72 working hours for out-of-city-limit (OCL) addresses — measured from case creation to report delivery. Two details in that sentence matter more than the numbers.
- Working hours, not wall-clock hours: a case created at 8 PM Saturday should not count Sunday against the agency. TAT measured on a working-hours calendar is the honest number, and the one worth putting in an agency agreement.
- Local vs OCL: the same agency can be excellent inside its hub city and slow 200 km away. Track the two populations separately or your averages will hide the problem.
- First-time-right rate belongs next to TAT: a report delivered fast but sent back for rework twice is slower than its TAT suggests. Mature programmes track the percentage of reports accepted without rework.
What makes a field investigation report credible?
A credible FI report proves the visit happened where and when it claims — everything else is opinion layered on that proof. When a report is challenged months later (by an auditor, a fraud investigator or a court), the questions are always the same: was the officer actually there, when, and is the evidence unaltered?
- Geo-tagged photographs with coordinates and timestamps burned into the image at capture — not added later.
- A named, identifiable field officer, so accountability does not dissolve into "someone from the agency".
- Stage timestamps for the full journey — assigned, visited, submitted, quality-checked, delivered — not just a final date.
- Outcome sub-status, not just positive/negative: untraceable, shifted, door locked, entry refused and not cooperative are operationally different findings.
- Tamper-evidence: any system (or process) that makes silent after-the-fact edits detectable turns the report from a claim into a record.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between FI and CPV?
Nothing substantive — contact point verification (CPV) and field investigation (FI) both refer to lender-ordered physical verification of an applicant. Banks and their vendors use the terms interchangeably; some reserve FI for the deeper checks and CPV for basic address confirmation, but there is no standard distinction.
Who actually conducts field investigations?
Specialised verification agencies empanelled by the lender conduct most field investigations, using their own field officers for each territory. Large lenders empanel several agencies per region and split volume by pincode coverage, cost and past performance.
What happens when an FI report comes back negative?
A negative FI report typically stops the loan from disbursing until the discrepancy is resolved. Depending on the finding — address untraceable, applicant unknown at the address, business non-existent — the lender may reject the application, order a re-verification, or escalate the file to its fraud containment unit.
How much does a field investigation cost in India?
Per-visit pricing varies by geography, verification type and volume, with metro residence checks at the lower end and out-of-city or specialised fraud checks costing more. Lenders negotiate rate cards per agency; a marketplace model replaces dozens of rate cards with a single consolidated bill.
Auto-routed cases, geo-stamped evidence, hash-chained audit trails and DPDP-first data handling — live at ambrezo.com.