Bruce’s PBSA Mid-Year 2025 Conference Report

PBSA 2025 Mid-Year Conference

Arlington, VA, March 23-26, 2025

We had a great experience at this year’s conference. Attendance was pretty much equal to last year at 358 total (354 in 2024 and 418 in 2023) and for us, the other exhibitors and the attendees I spoke with all felt it was a very fruitful conference and exhibit hall.

Regular Member: 151
Associate Member: 194
Affiliate Member: 10
Non-Member: 3
Total Attendees: 358
First Time Members: 57
Attendee: 232
Exhibitors: 115
Sponsor: 11

Even without a dance band and no planned activity for Monday night, it was still very successful for us.  Note: without the late dancing, I didn’t lose my voice by Tuesday trying to talk over the loud music on the dance floor.  But I would rather have gotten my fun dance “exercise” and suffered being hoarse.  I’m expecting better at the fall conference in Anaheim!

Is it strange that every year I get on the plane to come to the spring conference, I tell myself that next year I just won’t do the spring conference, it’s all just Compliance people anyway.  Every year I prove that that is not the case. Many critical, timely and informative sessions were covered over the two days of the conference.  This huge investment in time and information is provided to you as a member/attendee.  An invaluable return on your small investment in supporting your Association while having some fun with a great group of people. I won’t list all the sessions here but if you want to know more specifics, see the PBSA website.  If you are in the screening business, you should take the time and attend.

People are still being impacted by the M&A in our industry with many CRAs garnering some of the fallout of clients from First Advantage acquiring Sterling.  As Berg Consulting Group is the leading intermediary in doing M&A deals in the screening industry, it was nice to see this high level of interest. Anytime there is consolidation, there always seems to be opportunity for other CRAs to pick up clients from the fallout.  This is true when CRAs and/or providers get merged or acquired.

Industry Trends

Sales Growth.

• Sales growth is not happening with most.  I heard everything from being off 10% year over year to up 20% (translation: if they admit to being off 10%, you can bet they were off at least 15%.  If they say they were up 20%, it was probably up 10%.  Of course, being up or down in sales, much depends on being in a vertical market that has been soft (tech, on-line sellers, brick-and-mortar retail) or not so soft (healthcare, gig economy).
• Three or four new “nationwide” county wholesalers were exhibiting all saying they are getting market share and were excited that they had a lot of potential leads coming from the conference. On the other hand, a few such wholesalers that exhibited in the past were not there this year.

Product offerings.

• Employment Verifications.
  • We saw continued discussion about clients giving up on or restricting the use of employment verifications because of the significant fees associated with The Work Number and similar services. While there are other services trying to provide cost-effective employment verification alternatives, this remains an issue with CRAs and end-users.
  • However, while many hinted at figuring out how in some cases they could get the verification without getting it from The Work Number, most have still not taken advantage of the selling employment and earnings histories (W-2s and 1099s) directly from the IRS, which, while being available for the past 35 years, now gives instant results and is competitively priced.
  • One presenter showed how they are successfully using AI to facilitate the process to keep their labor costs down.
• NatCrims (aka multi-jurisdictional database). One new provider is using AI to look at all the information they receive on a candidate when the end user orders several screening components to help them pinpoint hits in their NatCrim database, weed out false positives and bring into their report hits they may not have identified based by just using name and DOB. Looks slick.
• Federal Searches. Again, another provider is using AI to look at all the data in PACER to extract most, if not all, the data needed, thereby reducing the labor cost significantly on potential hit.
• International scene.
  • Not only has PBSA grown in membership from CRAs in foreign countries, we also see more domestic providers offering international background checks and even the mid-sized wholesalers of criminal records getting stronger in this area. We also notice communications from local research companies all over the world trying to establish relationships with USA-based CRAs.
  • On the other hand, the feedback I got from such providers of this data was not particularly upbeat as regards sales increases.
• Disruptors. One interesting session offered 4 areas of potential disruptors for thought and discussion.  Interesting thought provokers:
  • Allow the applicant to review the report before being sent to the end user.
  • Live auction bidding for county criminal searchers to achieve the lowest cost.
  • Have the candidate be the party that pays for their (several hundred dollars) health screening report (e.g. for healthcare job applicants). This would save the employer the cost and the completed report will be in the hands of the applicant to give at any time to any future employer (Digital Wallet.

Mergers & Acquisitions.

• Well, the past nine months have been slow in the M&A world compared to previous years. 2025 looks like it will be much bigger.  Deals included:
  • The sale of Hire Level (we were the intermediary) in Dec 2024.
  • American Databank sold to DISA in February 2025
• You should expect to see a very large deal come down in the next few months.
• We are working diligently with a half dozen deals right now but we will have to see how many we can bring to fruition.
• Make sure your bookkeeping is correct (including using Accrual, not Cash accounting) and up to the minute. If you include personal items in your expenses, be sure to be able to clearly account for these.  If you are a business owner of a C-Corp, ask your accountant immediately why you are not an S-Corp or an LLC.

People, Places, Stuff

• Justin Cameron, recently left PayCom to become an industry consultant (just what I needed!! 😊).
• Jeanette Spofford of Justifacts is retiring after 45 years in the industry.  I’m the old guy in the industry and I only have 34 years in.  This is a family business that will continue being a family business.
• Ann Beecher, CEO at Cutting Edge Backgrounds, was very nice to stop by and tell me how much she appreciated me urging her a dozen years ago during a consultation to immediately get on some 3^rd party platform, which, of course, has helped make her a real business.
• Craig Caddell is now with Propelus.
• Dean Carras, now with Interactive Data.
• Jackie Loriga now with Safe Check Research.
• Julie Hakman now with Instahire Check.
• Kym Kurey is now working PT with TrueCordis.
• Perry Morgan was helping (the absent) Barry Nixon at the PreEmployment Directory exhibit.  Good ‘ol Perry.
• Linda Thurmond Murrell left Universal Screening for OneSource.
• Chad Lafon is now with RPA Data Group.
• David Gamsely retired from First Advantage.
• Guy Abramo no longer CEO at HIreRight.
• Danny Cooner retired from Safety First.
• Gary Glucroft is now with Yardi.
• Simon West retired from Triton.
• Todd McCormick left Vital4 for CRO position outside the industry.
• Alicia Jones left Insperity and then deverus to go back to college for another degree and is looking for part-time work in the industry.
• Andrew Feigenson became CEO of InformData (I’m hearing good feedback on him) when Scott Vanek moved their Executive Chair.
• Cliff Williams (former Innovative) is planning a comeback to the industry. He says: “stay tuned”.

Issues and education sessions:

CFPB

Everyone is waiting to see what is going to happen to this CRA oversight group since Trump wants it gone.

Regulatory guidance (this is not legal advice from me or from the source (Pam Devata) who says (my paraphrase):

• The most frequent FCRA lawsuit claims are regarding accuracy.
• Increase in claims regarding verifications (unable to verify or just wrong).
• More SOR litigation. It’s better to report “listed on the registry” rather than say “a sex offender”.
• Warrants-do not report before verifying with the issuing agency that the warrant is active. Even if over seven years old, if issuer confirms it is active, you may be able to report it (documentation is paramount).
• Seeing more lawsuits against Tenant Screeners.
• Attorneys use social media to search (including TikTok) to find potential litigants that may think they have been wronged.
• Litigants’ money demands are increasing; many are asking for over $100k in damages. Only 1% ever go to trial.  Too expensive to fight.

Litigation caveats (note: this is a repeat from last year but worth repeating): Another session by Arnall Golden Gregory provided caveats:

• Section 607: Lawsuits center on reporting on the wrong person because of common names, lack of ID, misreporting misdemeanors as a felony, reporting expunged records.
• Section 611: Lawsuits for not re-investigating and for not having appropriate access for a consumer to make a dispute.
• Section 613: Not notifying the applicant of a record found or claims of not having strict procedures regarding accuracy.
• Do a regular review of policies and procedures.
• Stay current with existing law changes.
• Educate all your staff.
• Triple-check all hit reports.

Advocacy Day

Of course, the reason for having this conference in DC is so we can go up on the hill to discuss our issues with our representatives.  PBSA members participated this year hoping to make an impact by donating their time and knowledge to this process.

Overall, a great investment of time for everyone to keep abreast of what is happening and what practical suggestions on how to stay in compliance, avoid lawsuits and deal with lawsuits when they inevitably happen.

The PBSA 2025 Annual Conference will be in Anaheim.

The 2026 Spring conference will be at the Grand Hyatt hotel in DC.

Remember, PBSA is the voice of the screening industry.

Call if you need an answer.

  561-827-2694

Never even consider selling your business, regardless of what you have been offered, without taking a few minutes to get our experienced input.

We’ve done over six dozen deals in the screening industry.  We know valuations.