What is required to facilitate a federal or state criminal history background check for licensing?

To facilitate a federal or state criminal history background check for licensing, fingerprints are required. This is because fingerprints provide a unique biometric identifier that can be used to access and verify an individual's criminal history records at both state and national levels. The process involves submitting fingerprints to law enforcement agencies, which then check them against their databases to identify any relevant criminal history.

Using fingerprints allows authorities to accurately match the individual to their criminal records, ensuring thorough and precise background checks necessary for assessing eligibility for licensing. This step is crucial in industries such as mortgage lending, where trustworthiness and integrity are paramount given the responsibilities associated with handling sensitive financial information.

While other pieces of identification, such as a social security number or driver's license number, are important for various verification processes, they do not provide the same level of detailed background information that fingerprints do in the context of criminal history checks. Recent financial records, while relevant to assessing someone's financial responsibility, are not a requirement for criminal background checks.