Newly appointed Checkr CFO Tim Yarbrough says investment in AI is a "non-negotiable" priority. The identity verification company is targeting a $40 billion market opportunity, planning to expand its business from employment verification to tenant verification, mortgage verification, and more. Yarbrough revealed this strategic direction in an interview with CFO Dive.

Yarbrough noted that the rapid evolution of AI has "fundamentally changed the way computing works"—both for identity verification itself and for fraudsters attempting to undermine it. AI enables bad actors to generate synthetic identities, forged credentials, and fabricated employment histories "with a sophistication that traditional verification methods were not designed to handle."

However, "AI is a double-edged sword," Yarbrough said. The technology "also allows us to stay ahead of threats at scale," including pushing Checkr toward continuous verification: "Not just understanding who someone is at the moment of hiring, but whether that information remains true over time."

Yarbrough was appointed CFO on April 22, after spending 11 years at ZipRecruiter, where he served as CFO of the job platform for the final four years. He has now joined Checkr, which is headquartered in San Francisco.

The following is Yarbrough's conversation with CFO Dive via email, covering AI investment strategy, hiring philosophy, and other strategic decisions, as well as why he chose to join Checkr. This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

CFO Dive: What attracted you to join Checkr as CFO?

Tim Yarbrough:Several things came together in a fairly rare way. First is timing. The world is changing quickly, and the question of "who to trust and how to verify that trust" has never been more complex or more important. AI-generated fraud, synthetic identities, forged credentials—these are no longer edge cases; they are reshaping how businesses, landlords, and individuals must think about the people they work with or let into their lives.

Second is the business itself. Checkr has a core data asset that only gets stronger as more decisions run through it. This is a compounding advantage that is truly hard to build, and we are still in the early stages. Expanding from employment screening into identity, income, and tenant verification represents a massive and largely untapped market. When you see a company with this kind of foundation and this kind of runway, you want to be part of building its future.

CFO Dive: What are your top priorities after taking office?

Tim Yarbrough:My top priority is ensuring the financial foundation keeps pace with ambition. Checkr is expanding from its leadership position in employment screening into new markets... This expansion must be supported by thoughtful resources and executed in an orderly manner. If the financial backing is not in place, even the right strategy can be poorly executed.

My job is to ensure we allocate capital to the areas where Checkr is most likely to win, ensure the cost structure scales efficiently with revenue growth, and ensure every team in the company has the financial visibility it needs to make the right decisions quickly. The mission and opportunity before us are too important to let financial friction slow us down.

CFO Dive: Where will your focus be in the first few months on the job?

Tim Yarbrough:Listening and learning. I can come in with frameworks, but the most important thing in the first few months is understanding the specific drivers of this business: what is working, what needs investment, and what the teams are seeing on the ground that has not yet shown up in the financial data.

A large part of my career has taught me that the best financial decisions come from being close to the business, not just the models. So, I will spend time with the product, sales, and operations teams to understand the nuances of each product line and customer segment. The insights from these conversations will shape everything else: how to set budgets, where to invest, and how to make trade-offs. I want to earn the right to have strong opinions before pushing my own.

CFO Dive: Can you elaborate on the $40 billion verification market Checkr is targeting? As CFO, how do you plan to enter this market?

Tim Yarbrough:The $40 billion opportunity spans emerging and mature markets... Demand for trusted, technology-driven decisions in these markets is growing rapidly, while existing solutions are often slow, fragmented, or reliant on manual processes. Checkr's approach to background checks has already proven that a high-risk, data-intensive process can be modernized in a way that is faster, more accurate, and fairer for all parties. Our thesis is that the same approach applies to these adjacent markets.

My role is to maintain discipline in the sequence of expansion. We have real advantages: more than 130,000 customers already trust Checkr, our data infrastructure is built specifically for these use cases, and the team knows how to execute in regulated, compliance-heavy environments. The question is not whether the market exists, but how we enter it in a way that strengthens our advantages rather than diluting our focus.

CFO Dive: What are your thoughts on growth pathways since taking office?

Tim Yarbrough:There are several layers. The most immediate opportunity is deepening relationships with existing customers... We already have the relationships and trust; the key is broadening the value we provide.

Beyond that, there are new customer segments that historically have not had access to the kind of technology-driven verification Checkr provides. As we develop continuous verification products—not just at the point of hiring or application, but ongoing—this will open up an entirely new model of customer engagement. The market is large, use cases are expanding, and the underlying demand for trusted verification will only grow.

CFO Dive: Can you talk about your plans for capital allocation, hiring, and investment at Checkr at this stage?

Tim Yarbrough:The principle I try to apply is: invest aggressively in areas where our data and competitive position are strongest, and maintain discipline elsewhere. For Checkr, this means continued investment in core technology: AI and data infrastructure that make our verification faster and more accurate than anyone else's. It also means investing in the talent and products needed to thoughtfully enter new markets. Hiring here follows strategy. I want to ensure we are building the capabilities truly needed for the next phase of growth, not just adding headcount for the sake of it.

There is also a piece of the finance function itself. I want to run a finance department that empowers the business rather than slowing it down.

CFO Dive: How will your experience at ZipRecruiter and other high-growth companies help you drive Checkr's growth?

Tim Yarbrough:ZipRecruiter was a formative experience in many ways. I joined when it was a high-growth private company, and I saw it through its IPO and into the public markets, navigating the different stages of scaling a two-sided marketplace—building financial infrastructure, managing macroeconomic cycles, and making resource allocation decisions under real uncertainty.

What I learned in that environment is that numbers are lagging indicators. By the time something shows up in the financial data, the root cause is often several quarters in the past. The best operators I have worked with understand this and stay close to leading signals: what customers are doing, what the pipeline looks like, and what the teams are actually feeling.

Checkr is a different company, but the core discipline is the same: understand the business deeply, build financial models that reflect reality rather than ambition, and ensure the company allocates resources to bets most likely to compound over time.

CFO Dive: What challenges or obstacles do you foresee for Checkr as it drives growth?

Tim Yarbrough:There are several. First is the external environment. AI is accelerating the sophistication of fraud faster than most people expect... The threat landscape is evolving rapidly, and staying ahead requires continuous investment and innovation.

Second is execution complexity. Expanding into new verification markets means navigating different regulatory regimes, building products for different customer workflows, and earning trust in categories where Checkr is not yet an established leader. Checkr has already done this in one of the most regulated industries—background checks—and we are confident in our ability to do it in new markets. But we know it takes time and focus. The way to manage it is through disciplined prioritization and clear sequencing, not trying to do everything at once.

Third, frankly, is talent. We are competing for people who can build products at the intersection of AI, data infrastructure, and compliance-intensive industries. It is a specific profile, and the competition for it is intense. Building a culture where these people want to work and stay is a real priority.