A new report from Experian about address verification practices analyzed findings from a survey of 50 of the top 100 credit unions, as ranked by Callahan & Associates, and found that the higher the overall performance ranking of a credit union, the more likely it was to be checking addresses to the most thorough degree.
While 68% of the credit unions surveyed used some form of verification, the report found, only 30% checked every level of an address down to apartment or suite number.
The survey also found that 30% of the top credit unions checked up to a house or building number but not to a potential apartment or suite number, while another 6% only verified an address’s city, state and zip code.
Of the credit unions that did not use any form of address verification, a smaller percentage said they considered it a priority for the year than did non-users from last year’s survey, according to the report.
The higher-ranked credit unions also reported more confidence in their data than non-users did last year–a change that the Experian paper suggested could be due to increased use of back-office data-cleansing tools.
The report recommended using such tools, along with member training and point-of-capture address verification, to cut down on returned mail costs and to improve member satisfaction.
