Office Address
Understanding where a business is located and operates can influence multiple decisions in the business entity diligence process. Moreover, addresses are not static and may change over time. As such, compliance, underwriting, or financial decisions often require a holistic picture of a business entity's historical physical presence.
In addition to location, the type of address is a critical signal for those conducting diligence. For example, home-based business owners face privacy and safety issues when using their home address as their physical business address and often opt instead to use a P.O. Box as their entity's registered address.
Other addresses commonly tied to a business can be:
- Virtual office space: Virtual office spaces or virtual business addresses sell professional-looking mailing addresses to businesses not operating at the location.
- Mailbox services: Businesses can rent a mailbox like those offered at The UPS Store or Mail Boxes Etc.
- Coworking space: Much like virtual office space, coworking spaces provide businesses with a professional mailing address to use for your business.
How Middesk helps with Addresses
Addresses can be an important part of verifying the legitimacy of a business.
For example, if you are a payment processor and you are evaluating the risk profile of a business, it is important to know what address this business is operating out of and the actual details of that address. It may be a red flag to see hundreds of thousands of dollars being processed in payments from a residential address.
When running a Business report, Middesk retrieves address information from bona fide sources such as the IRS, Secretary of State, and other regulatory bodies that require address filings. At the same time, Middesk flags other details about retrieved addresses, including whether the address is a commercial or residential location, a virtual or mailbox location, deliverable, a registered agent and the frequency of use across business registrations.
While addresses have a number of data points that are relevant, we will always summarize the submitted address information as in the review tasks below.
For more information about Addresses, see our reference or reach out to [email protected]. Additionally, see our Policies guide for information about setting up auto-approval and auto-rejection policies based on address task outcomes.
Tasks
Verification
The Verification task summarizes the submitted address address verification result, indicating whether the submitted addresses match known addresses associated with the business.
| status | label | sub_label | key |
|---|---|---|---|
| Success | Match identified to the submitted Office Address | Verified | address_verification |
| Warning | Identified an address within 0.2 miles of the submitted Office Address | Approximate Match | address_verification |
| Warning | Identified a similar address | Similar Match | address_verification |
| Warning | Identified a partial match with a submitted address that is incomplete | Incomplete Match | address_verification |
| Failure | Unable to identify a match to the submitted Office Address | Unverified | address_verification |
CMRA
The CMRA task denotes a submitted address is tagged by USPS as a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency, meaning a business does not operate at this address and may be a fraud indicator.
| status | label | sub_label | key | category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Failure | Submitted Office Address is zoned by USPS as a Commercial Mail Receiving Agency | Low frequency | address_cmra | address |
Deliverability
The Deliverability task indicates whether a mail can be delivered to an address.
| status | label | sub_label | key | category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Success | The USPS is able to deliver mail to the submitted Office Address | Deliverable | address_deliverability | address |
| Failure | The USPS is unable to deliver mail to the submitted Office Address | Undeliverable | address_deliverability | address |
Location frequency
The Location Frequency task captures how often submitted address locations are used across businesses in the U.S., indicating potential misuse.
| status | label | sub_label | key | category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Success | 1–20 businesses use this location | Low frequency | location_frequency | address |
| Success | 2–20 businesses use this location | Low frequency | location_frequency | address |
| Warning | 21–100 businesses use this location | Moderate frequency | location_frequency | address |
| Failure | 101–1000 businesses use this location | High frequency | location_frequency | address |
| Failure | 1001–10000 businesses use this location | High frequency | location_frequency | address |
| Failure | 10000+ businesses use this location | High frequency | location_frequency | address |
Property Type
Property Type task indicates whether the address is a commercial or residential property, which may signal potential address misuse.
| status | label | sub_label | key | category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Success | Submitted Office Address is a Commercial property | Commercial | address_property_type | address |
| Warning | Submitted Office Address is a Residential property | Residential | address_property_type | address |
Registered Agent
The Registered Agent task flags if any submitted addresses are registered agents addresses, which are commonly used in fraudulent schemes.
| status | label | sub_label | key | category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warning | Submitted Office Address is associated with a known Registered Agent | Registered Agent | address_registered_agent | address |
Updated 4 months ago