Introducing AddressFirst: a new evolution in geocoding

Addresscloud are very excited to launch AddressFirst, a new product combining the best of Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey address data into a single, fully-managed package.

This new dataset provides coordinates for every single postal address throughout Great Britain with geographic coordinates from the Ordnance Survey (OS) for rooftop level accuracy.  Thanks to new PSGA licensing rules from the Geospatial Commission, this data is available at a very attractive price via our fully hosted Match API service with both transactional and fixed price options available.  This is an excellent solution for insurers, surveyors, lenders and logistics companies alike and overcomes many of the challenges of existing addressing solutions.

Why AddressFirst?

The AddressBase product suite from the Ordnance Survey is one of the richest, most advanced addressing products in the world.  As an OS Partner, Addresscloud have been delivering services based on AddressBase Premium since 2015 and process more than 10 million transactions a month.  However, the AddressBase products do not include some addresses, notably where:

• some organisations share the same delivery address, for example organisations using an accountant or lawyer's address as their registered legal address, or startups working in a shared office,
• some large user postcode addresses in a single location may have many postcodes for delivering mail, and
• new builds or new organisations which have not yet been processed and assigned coordinates.

Addresscloud overcome these challenges by "putting the address first": we assign a set of coordinates and an accuracy code to every Royal Mail delivery address in Great Britain. Where possible we use the AddressBase Core product to assign true rooftop level coordinates and a UPRN but falling back to postcode level coordinates from OS CodePoint Open where a property level match is not possible.

In addition to the PAF main file Addresscloud bring in the Multiple Residence and Not Yet Built products which add an additional ~1.5 million addresses.  We also map 435,000 organisation and 646,000 building name aliases from the PAF Alias product for optimal match rates including coverage of organisations based at home addresses which are not always covered by the AddressBase products.

Why Addresscloud?

Addresscloud are recognised leaders in UK and Ireland address matching and geocoding and have provided services to leading financial services and logistics companies since 2015.  Our services power some of the best known insurance brands and we process more than 10 million transactions a month for RSA.  Our match rates through our Match API are some of the best around and we employ high precision, nuanced address matching that will cope with poor quality data on a highly scalable, fully serverless platform.  Our service is backed by a 99.9% uptime guarantee and delivers sub-second performance that can scale to any workload.

Who is this for?

AddressFirst is an excellent solution for insurers, and is particularly well suited to residential and SME insurers where new builds or newly registered organisations are a challenge.  Having this information available in your systems as quickly as possible can mean the difference between winning and losing a piece of business.

Logistics companies will benefit from highly accurate, rooftop level geocoding to solve the "last mile" problem minimising the amount of time drivers spend locating properties and realising cost savings through more accurate routing.

If you have ever found yourself saying: "why can't I find this address, it's in PAF" then AddressFirst is for you!

Who is this not for?

Local and central government organisations requiring every address regardless of whether it receives mail would be better served by the existing AddressBase offerings.  Likewise for utility companies or insurers specialising in infrastructure insurance or other non-addressable risks AddressBase Premium will be a better choice.  Addresscloud will continue to provide first class support for AddressBase products through our Match API with the same level of service that we provide today.

How often is the data updated?

We currently update the data once a month however we will be providing daily address updates by 1st September 2020.  The OS AddressBase Core dataset is scheduled to be updated weekly and this will be used to link addresses to a UPRN and rooftop coordinates.  Where an address cannot be matched to AddressBase Core it will be assigned postcode unit or postcode sector level coordinates (no UPRN) from CodePoint Open until such time as it is present in AddressBase Core.

When will this be available?

AddressFirst is available now!  Contact us for more information or to setup a trial. To keep up to date with more news follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.