Data quality, accuracy, currency and completeness are critical success factors in running a credit bureau. Baycorp Advantage has long recognised the importance of data integrity and has teams in Australia and New Zealand dedicated to monitoring and reporting on data quality, analysing the data and initiating clean-up activities on a continuous basis.

Recent analysis and clean-up activities on the New Zealand and Australian bureaux have focussed on details used for retrieving and matching individual’s details – name, date of birth, gender, driver’s licence (Australia only) and address data.

Our analysis of individual’s names identified a number of data entry issues, such as; more than one given name in the first-name field, first and second given names entered as the same, and surname and given names transposed etc. A set of rules has been produced based on this analysis and clean-up processes initiated to correct name data.

For a number of individual files, the gender is recorded as 'U' representing 'unknown'. The Data Quality team is determining the size of this issue and categorising given names where, with a high degree of confidence, we can assert whether the individuals are female or male. A process is being run to populate the gender field of files when both given names have a common gender code.

The NZ Data Quality team is currently ensuring all addresses on the bureau are in a consistent format, and that mandatory fields have been entered. As part of this analysis, the team is identifying possible ways that inconsistent address data can be cleansed before being loaded on the bureau to enable more effective searches and clearer results for our customers.

Additionally, we are in the early stages of cross-checking addresses against master sets of addresses based on those of NZ Post and Australia Post. This will enable misspellings of street names and suburbs to be corrected, missing fields of an address to be populated and addresses not found to exist on the master sets to be identified.

Cleaning-up and correcting of identity data is helping to maintain and improve the match results for our customers. Additionally it enables files to be crossreferenced when a consumer changes identity or is using more than one identity when seeking credit. Lastly in those cases where as a result of clean-up and correction it is evident that the identity data on two files match we are able to combine/merge the credit files.

What can customers do to optimise their results when using bureau services and improve the integrity of bureau data?
This year the monthly average match rate for a customer inquiring on the Baycorp Advantage bureau database for a consumer was between 87 and 88.5%.

Analysis has shown when minimal identity data is input by a customer the match rate falls to 83.9%.

Optimal match results of 93.9% are achieved when a customer inputs all possible identity data for a consumer.

That is:

• Consumer’s full name
• Date of birth
• Driver’s licence (Australia only)
• Gender
• Current residential address
• Previous residential address

By ensuring the correct spelling of name and address data and providing all available identity data at the outset customers can optimise the result of their inquiry.

To find out more about specific products or services that meet the needs of your business, please contact us via our website.  Alternatively visit our website to view our range of verification services.