Safe Harbour Results

This article discusses the results you may see for Safe Harbour and contains the following information:

• What checks will appear for Safe Harbour journeys? 
• Safe Harbour Results
• Supporting Documents
• Liveness Results
• Identity Document Results
• UK Address & Mortality or Proof of Address Results
• PEPs & Sanctions Results
• What happens if the checks do not pass?

You may also wish to read our guide here detailing the Safe Harbour requirements from HMLR: Safe Harbour Guide : Partner Support.

What checks will appear for Safe Harbour journeys? 

We offer different Safe Harbour journeys, split into vendor and purchaser options, these will typically include the following checks: 

• Passport & Liveness verification;
• Address & Mortality check (if UK) or proof of address capture (if overseas);
• Capture of two linking documents to the property being sold (if Safe Harbour Vendor journey);
• PEPs & Sanctions screening if the journey contains 'international screening'.

Safe Harbour Results

When sending out a Safe Harbour journey, you will see a Safe Harbour check appear on the individuals result. 

If all conditions have been met to meet Safe Harbour standards, and there are no checks needing manual verification, Credas will provide you with an automatic Safe Harbour pass. This went into effective from the 7th October 2025. 

If the conditions have not been met, the Safe Harbour check will appear as 'pending validation' and will require you to manually remediate it depending on your organisations internal policies. Safe Harbour vendor journeys will always need manual remediation due to the linking documents needing your manual verification. 

Conditions for a Safe Harbour Pass

The following conditions all need to be met for Safe Harbour to produce a pass result from Credas:

Safe Harbour Pending Validation

If the above conditions are not met, then Safe Harbour will always show as 'pending validation' and will require you to manually pass or fail Safe Harbour and remediate any of the failed/pending validation checks that have caused Safe Harbour not to pass depending on your organisations internal policies .

Please note - Safe Harbour will always show as 'pending validation' if you sent out the Safe Harbour Vendor journey as you will always need to manually review the two linking documents. 

How do you manually pass/fail Safe Harbour?

To manually review the Safe Harbour check, click 'Review'. You will then be presented with the passport captured, and its results. If you issued a Safe Harbour Vendor journey, you will also see the two linking documents to the property being sold here.  You will be asked to update the status depending on if you believe the checks meet Safe Harbour standard and provide a comment as can be seen below. This comment will appear in the PDF for audit trials.

You may also wish to read our guide here detailing the Safe Harbour requirements from HMLR. 

Supporting Documents

If you have issued a Safe Harbor Vendor journey, you will see 'supporting documents' appear. Supporting documents for Safe Harbour journeys refers to two linking documents to the property being sold, and these will always appear as 'pending review' as they need manually reviewing by yourselves. Please see our guide here to understand the linking document requirements.

Liveness Results

Our passive liveness technology automatically measures and analyses physical characteristics and reactions to determine if the person being captured is live and present. If we were unable to confirm the individual is live and present via passive liveness - we will ask the individual to complete a pose.

If you have Credas+ remediation, our trained back office team will review the liveness pose and you will be provided with a pass or fail.If you do not have Credas+ and were unable to pass the passive liveness check, the pose will be presented to you for manual review.

For help understanding your liveness results, please review our guidance here.

Identity Document Results

You will be able to view the results of the passports results within the Identity Documents results. To achieve a Safe Harbour, a NFC check for the passport must be a pass. If you wish for the individual to have another attempt at scanning their NFC, you can follow the steps here.

If the passport has come back as a fail/refer, you will need to remediate/resubmit the check depending on your organisations internal policies. For further help understanding your identity results, please review our guidance here.  

UK Address & Mortality of Proof of Address Results

If the individual lives in the UK, you will see a UK Address & Mortality check appear in your results, this result uses sources from the UK electoral roll, HALO database and UK financial institutions to confirm the individual resides in the address in question and they are not deceased. To understand the UK Address & Mortality results further, please read our guide here.

If the individual does not live in the UK, instead of running the UK Address & Mortality check, we will ask the individual to provide a proof of address document. This proof of address document will appear within the 'evidence' tab, as can be seen below. You will always need to review the document provided and ensure it is a real proof of address document and meets your internal policies. 

PEPs & Sanctions Results

If you have issued a Safe Harbour journey that contains 'international screening', you will see a PEPs & Sanctions tab appear. To understand your PEPs & Sanctions results, please read our guide here.

What happens if the checks do not pass?

Supporting Documents will always appear as pending validation and require your manual validation depending on your internal policies as Credas does not verify non-biometric documents. 

Safe Harbour may appear as pending validation if the standards to meet Safe Harbour have not been met, or there is outstanding manual validation you need to complete. If you are unsure on what to do next, please refer to your MLRO/compliance officer who can advise in line with your internal policies. 

If any of the checks such as Identity Document Verification or Liveness have not come back as a pass, it is down to your internal policies on what you should do next. You may wish to remediate the checks in question, or request the individual to have another attempt at completing their liveness/passport check by following the steps here.

Got any questions? 

If you have any questions please reach out to the Credas support team by contacting us here

We are commited to continually improving our support resources for you. We would greatly appreciate your feedback on this article to help us enhance your experience.