RATA Incorporating the New CFPB Geocoder

The CFPB has announced in various documents that it will be developing and making available a new geocoder to help reduce the geocoding burden and theoretically standardize geocoding results. They already had the FFIEC geocoder that could have been used for this, but apparently they believe they can do better than that. They have even said that institutions who use this geocoder will receive safe harbor if their product gives the wrong result. If that is the case, institutions will definitely want to use that geocoder whenever possible. To make sure that institutions can take advantage of this safe harbor and also get the best geocoding results possible for addresses the CFPB can't hit, RATA will be incorporating the CFPB geocoder into our processes.

With RATA's cloud-based geocoding solution, we incorporate as many high quality geocoders into our process as possible. We currently have two very high-precision geocoders that we use internally, plus we use the FFIEC and many online geocoders to help supplement and verify results. By using many different geocoders and verification processes we can geocode each address submitted to the best geocode possible.

With the new CFPB geocoder on the horizon, RATA already has development under way to incorporate the CFPB geocoder into the RATA processes for both the Comply product and our QuickPoint Webservice geocoder. This will give institutions all of the benefits of the CFPB geocoder and its "safe harbor" plus the benefits of RATA's ability to hit the hard-to-find addresses and ZOOM for visual verifications. Because our geocoding services are cloud-based, RATA is uniquely positioned to easily take advantage of the CFPB geocoder and offer those benefits to all of our clients.

Basically for 2018 geocoding, rather than provide clients with a single result as we do now, RATA plans to return multiple results for each address and let the client determine which result to keep: on a case-by-case basis, using preset logic, or a combination of both.

Every address submitted to RATA for geocoding will be run through RATA's two premier geocoders and the CFPB geocoder. We will also run the address through our complete GeoPlus process which includes the other geocoders mentioned above. Those 4 results will be returned to the client and will be available for review. We will have logic built into the system to determine which result should be the "submittable" one for each address. This logic will compare all results and identify geocodes that are "no-brainers", where all results agree, and will have ways of identifying addresses that have differing results. There will be a way to filter down to those records so that the client can visually verify the geocode if necessary. We will have default settings which tell the system to use CFPB results for all of the addresses it hits and then augment with RATA results for those that the CFPB can't geocode. We are still in the process of designing all of these capabilities and I am sure they will be even more robust when fully implemented.

Bottom line

RATA customers will have the benefits of both the CFPB geocoder and RATA's geocoding expertise to help come up with a strategy on whether to use the CFPB for all results, try and obtain the most accurate result for each address, or a combination of these. The best part is, RATA will do all of the work in implementing the new CFPB technology so that it runs seamlessly on your side.