Experience letter fraud in India: what the 2026 data actually shows
Discrepancy rates in Indian hiring are now measured in double digits. The numbers, the sources, and what an employer can do about the letters it issues.
"How common is experience letter fraud?" usually gets answered with a shrug. It does not have to be. Indian background-verification firms run millions of checks a year and publish what they find, and the picture from 2025 to 2026 is consistent enough to plan around.
What the published data shows
AuthBridge's Workforce Fraud Files for the first half of FY26 put material discrepancy rates in high-growth sectors such as IT and BFSI at roughly 12.4% to 13%, close to one in every eight candidates misrepresenting something material.
EY's employment fraud research, drawing on more than a million verifications across ninety-plus Indian companies, reports discrepancies in a large majority of employment-history checks, and found a substantial share of screened candidates engaged in dual employment, identified through overlapping records and GST registrations tied to a PAN.
NASSCOM has reported that around 48% of Indian employers have caught discrepancies in candidate resumes through background checks, ranging from inflated titles to fabricated qualifications. Earlier global benchmarking from HireRight found a high rate of employment-history discrepancy among Indian candidates specifically.
This is not theoretical. Accenture terminated employees in India in 2023 over fake experience letters, and Cognizant dismissed staff in the same period following failed background checks tied to fabricated resumes.
Figures above come from the published research of the named firms and are refreshed periodically. Check the current edition before quoting them in a policy document.
Why the letter is the weak point
A degree can be checked against a university. Employment usually cannot be checked against anything except the former employer, and that employer is a busy HR inbox with no obligation to reply.
So the artefact carries the whole burden. And the artefact is a PDF on a letterhead: trivially editable, with a scanned signature that can be lifted from any other document, and no way to distinguish an original from a copy with the dates changed. Verification then falls back to emailing an address printed on the letter itself: which, if the letter is fabricated, is an address the candidate controls.
The gap widens as companies shut down, get acquired, or simply stop answering. A candidate with five genuine years at a firm that no longer exists has no route to prove it, and an honest applicant is penalised alongside a dishonest one.
What HR teams do today
Most Indian employers triangulate rather than trust the letter: UAN and EPFO records to confirm employment periods and expose overlaps, payslips and bank credits to corroborate salary, and a direct approach to the former employer through a channel not printed on the document. Each of these is slower than reading a letter, which is precisely why the letter keeps being used despite everyone knowing its weakness.
The half nobody optimises
Almost all attention goes to detecting bad letters coming in. Far less goes to the letters your own company sends out, and that is the half you control completely.
Every experience letter issued on plain letterhead becomes a template somebody can edit. Your format, your signature block, your letterhead: all reusable by anyone who has received one. Meanwhile your HR team spends real hours answering verification calls about ex-employees, because there is no way for the asker to check without asking.
Both problems share a fix. Issue letters carrying a unique identifier and a link to a page you host, where a verifier sees the employee name, the role, the dates and the current status without contacting anyone. Sign the contents so an altered copy fails the check rather than passing it. Keep the ability to revoke, because letters do get issued in error.
A short checklist
- Count the verification requests your HR team answered last quarter. That is your current cost.
- Take one experience letter you issued and try to alter it in a PDF editor. Note how long it takes.
- Ask whether an outsider holding that letter could confirm it without emailing you.
- If not, add a unique reference and a public verification page to the template.
- Use it for new leavers; backfill older letters only when somebody asks.
You will not fix Indian hiring fraud from one HR department. You can stop your own letters being part of the raw material.
