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Concept tier claim

Vouch Evidence

opda:VouchEvidence

Vouch Evidence

A Vouch Evidence is a formal attestation by a regulated professional — for example, an SRA-licensed solicitor vouching for a client’s identity, or a regulated accountant vouching for source-of-funds.

Why it matters

Vouches are the everyday lubricant of conveyancing where documentary evidence is unavailable, lost, or impractical to produce. They are qualitatively weaker than Document or Electronic Record evidence: an attestation depends on the voucher’s professional standing, not on an authoritative authority’s issuance chain. OPDA caps Vouch Evidence at eIDAS Low Assurance — regardless of the voucher’s quality — because the attestation pattern itself has a lower ceiling than authority-issued evidence.

If you are a compliance officer working with vouched evidence and worried about the assurance ceiling, this is the entity that makes the cap explicit.

Hard cases

  • High-quality voucher, low-assurance ceiling. A King’s Counsel vouches for a fact. The Vouch is still Low Assurance — the ceiling is on the pattern, not the voucher. To exceed the ceiling, you need a corroborating Document or Electronic Record.
  • Multiple corroborating Vouches. Two solicitors vouch for the same fact. The combined Vouch evidence remains Low Assurance under eIDAS — corroboration doesn’t promote tier.
  • Vouch by an unregulated party. A neighbour vouches for a residence claim. This is not Vouch Evidence under the eIDAS / OIDC4IDA category — it is at best an unauthenticated assertion.

Identity Criterion

A Vouch Evidence record is identified by its (voucher agent, attestation date, attested fact) triple. Two records refer to the same Vouch only if all three coincide. See the Logical tier → for the typed structure (attribution to a regulated Agent, professional-licence reference).

  • Evidence — Vouch Evidence is one of three Evidence subtypes
  • Vouch — short-name alias used by worked examples
  • Claim — Claims supported by Vouch Evidence
  • Verification Activity — verifies a Claim using Vouch Evidence
  • Assurance Level — Vouch Evidence caps at eIDAS Low
%%{init: {"theme": "base"}}%% flowchart LR accTitle: Vouch Evidence related-Kinds neighbourhood graph accDescr: Vouch Evidence as one of three Evidence subtypes, with short-name alias Vouch; identified by (voucher agent, attestation date, attested fact); caps at eIDAS Low Assurance regardless of voucher quality. classDef centre fill:#E1BEE7,stroke:#6A1B9A,stroke-width:3px,color:#4A148C classDef cls fill:#B3E5FC,stroke:#0277BD,stroke-width:2px,color:#01579B classDef alias fill:#FFF9C4,stroke:#F57F17,stroke-width:2px,color:#E65100 classDef warning fill:#FFF9C4,stroke:#F9A825,stroke-width:2px,color:#F57F17 VouchEv["VouchEvidence"]:::centre Evidence["Evidence
(supertype)"]:::cls Vouch["Vouch
(alias)"]:::alias Claim["Claim"]:::cls Verification["VerificationActivity"]:::cls LowAssurance["AssuranceLevel
(Low — capped)"]:::warning VouchEv -.->|"isA"| Evidence VouchEv ===|"owl:equivalentClass"| Vouch Claim -->|"supportedBy"| VouchEv Verification -->|"uses"| VouchEv VouchEv -.->|"caps at"| LowAssurance

Source ODR

ODR-0009 — Claims, evidence, provenance §Q1

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