How Canadian businesses get a bank confirmation letter today — and where it breaks down
Auditors in Canada have a standard, electronic confirmation process. Trade credit has nothing of the sort. Vendors extending Net 30 terms are left with credit bureau reports, faxes to a branch, and consent wording pulled off a legal forms site. This page sets out each option honestly, including what CreditConfirm does not do.
Confirmation.com (Thomson Reuters)
The electronic channel most major Canadian banks use to answer audit confirmations, built around the standard bank confirmation form.
Auditor-gated. A trade credit vendor cannot open an account or send a request through it, because the network is designed for licensed audit firms confirming financial statements.
Credit bureaus (Equifax Canada, TransUnion, D&B, Creditsafe)
Commercial reports built from registry filings, public records and payment history reported by other suppliers.
None of it comes from the applicant's own bank, and no customer authorization is captured. Useful context, but it does not answer whether a banking relationship exists and is in good standing today.
Fax, email and phone calls to the branch
Still the default for most Canadian trade credit teams: a credit application with a bank reference section, then chasing the branch.
No durable consent record, no way for the branch to verify who is asking, no way for you to verify who replied — and a growing number of institutions simply decline unstructured requests.
Generic authorization templates
Off-the-shelf consent and release wording bought from a legal forms site and attached to a credit application.
A document only. No delivery, no signer identity check, no expiry, no audit trail, and nothing that tells the bank the request is legitimate.
Side by side
Capability comparison only. No pricing, ratings or performance claims are made about any third-party service.
Written applicant consent captured
- CreditConfirm
- Signed before any request is sent
- Confirmation.com
- Client-signed confirmation form
- Credit bureaus
- Not applicable
- Fax & email
- Depends on the vendor's paperwork
- Generic form
- Wording only
Verified signer identity
- CreditConfirm
- Emailed one-time code before signing
- Confirmation.com
- Handled by the audit firm
- Credit bureaus
- Not applicable
- Fax & email
- Whoever returns the form
- Generic form
- None
Bank can respond without creating an account
- CreditConfirm
- Single-purpose secure link
- Confirmation.com
- Bank must be on the network
- Credit bureaus
- Bank is not involved
- Fax & email
- But unstructured
- Generic form
- No delivery at all
Response sender verification
- CreditConfirm
- Confidence level recorded per response
- Confirmation.com
- Institution-authenticated
- Credit bureaus
- Not applicable
- Fax & email
- Any inbox can reply
- Generic form
- None
Append-only audit trail
- CreditConfirm
- Every access, signature and download
- Confirmation.com
- Within the audit workflow
- Credit bureaus
- Report pull history only
- Fax & email
- Scattered across inboxes
- Generic form
- None
Open to trade credit vendors
- CreditConfirm
- Built for this use case
- Confirmation.com
- Audit firms only
- Credit bureaus
- Subscription or per-report
- Fax & email
- Anyone, with mixed results
- Generic form
- Anyone
Modelled on an established standard
The CPA Canada and Canadian Bankers Association standard bank confirmation form is the one piece of Canadian practice that banks already recognise. Its structure — a client-signed authorization first, then a fixed list of factual items the institution confirms — shaped our confirmation item list and consent wording. We do not replicate the audit form itself; we borrow the discipline of asking only for limited factual information the bank is willing to confirm.
See the workflowWhat CreditConfirm does not do
- We do not provide credit scores, ratings or risk models.
- We do not replace a bureau report — many teams will want both.
- We are not a bank, lender or credit bureau, and we do not make credit decisions.
- Each institution decides what it will confirm. Some branches answer fully, some answer partially, and some decline.
- We never label a response verified unless the underlying control was completed.
See it against your own credit process
Walk through a live request with fictional data, then tell us where it would slot into your onboarding.