Better Credit Checks through Address Standardisation
Satori Software contact data quality solution key to UK market
US-based National Processing of America, Inc. (NPA) provides consumer credit loans for a network of merchants in the US and a number of foreign outlets. The company ran into a roadblock when it entered the British market. Resistance from businesses didn’t make entry rocky. Credit checks simply require a vastly different process in the UK.
The company needed an efficient way to check credit history. One that didn’t rely upon a national identification number, which are not used in Britain to match a consumer to a credit history. NPA turned to home addresses to match UK consumers to their credit history. But, even that method presented new problems.
"In the United States we have a predictable format: street number, street, city, Zip Code," explains Tim Valdez, Director of Foreign Markets at NPA. "In the UK, an address can contain a building name, house number, street name, province, postal code, locality and city. You never know which or how many elements an applicant will include. How do we determine if an address is complete when some have six elements, while others have three or four?"
Making Crooked Addresses Straight
To sort the addressing problems, NPA adopted MailRoom ToolKit Architect, an integrated contact data quality solution that validates and, most importantly, standardises addresses.
"Our web forms caused issues within our system," explains Valdez. "When there weren’t enough address fields on the web form, applicants would cram the entire address in one field. Now, no matter how bad the address is, MailRoom ToolKit Architect corrects and formats it in a way our system can use."
NPA had accumulated a large list of badly formatted addresses. The first step, batch-cleansing, broke up the long address fields, corrected addressing errors, and standardised formatting for their entire database. Once scrubbed, the addresses could be matched to corresponding records in third-party credit history databases. Mission accomplished.
Accurate Address Data is Efficient Data
"Our customers have a lot of choices in the consumer credit market," says Valdez. "When a customer applies for a loan, it’s all about speed. If you don’t get to them quickly, they will find another vendor. Manual credit checks aren’t an option."
All NPA credit applicants fill in their information online. The newly entered address is immediately scrubbed by the Architect address validation process and sent to the next step in the automated approval process.
"If the process wasn’t automated, it would be impossible to stay in business," says Valdez.
Credit Integration
NPA integrated the MailRoom ToolKit Architect API into their credit application web forms and CRM database. According to Valdez the integration process was easy and the sample code for Architect was about as plug-and-play as you could get. After a few development hours the software was up and running.
"Since installation, MailRoom ToolKit Architect has been running like a champ," says Valdez. "Integration with our own technology was seamless, you almost forget Architect is there working in the background. We’re glad it is, because without address management, expansion into the UK market would have been impossible."
About National Processing of America, Inc.
Headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas, NPA funds consumer credit loans to borrowers internationally. For more information, visit www.national-processing.com.