New Zealand Address matching

Find detailed information to optimize NZ address matching results below.

NZ Credit and NZ Utility

Address fields are defined as below:

addressElement1 - Street address (number and street name and type*)

addressElement3 - Suburb 

addressElement4 - City

addressElement5 - Postcode

Only full match of address will result in a successful address verification.

NZ Residential, LINZ, Companies

Address fields are defined as below:

addressElement1 - Street address (number and street name and type*)

addressElement3 - Suburb 

addressElement4 - City

addressElement5 - Postcode

Elements return a ‘true’ response IF compared string match score > 90%, else False.

Although not mandatory, street type is part of the address information and when provided will contribute positively to the match score when a match is found.

*Street types are as per the official NZ Post guide and are also displayed at the end of this article.

A score will be calculated as sum of weights of the address elements provided, out of all four address elements mentioned above.

The default threshold for “addressMatchScore” is 0.600.

In favour of passing a document successfully to NZ data sources for verification some conditions must be met in the request:

• Two address elements are mandatory in order to perform the search. Address element 1 must be one of them. 
• IF address element1 and one more address element is NOT ENTERED, an ‘Invalid Input for Address’ is returned.

Considerations

Address number can be provided with or without number of flat/floor/unit if this is not applicable. 

Street name provided in short form will most probably reduce the match score, reducing the chances of a successful verification.

An ideal format to verify the address successfully would be: unit number - building number - streetname and type - suburb - city/town - postcode. e.g. "3/123 Johnstone Street West Point Chevalier Auckland 1022"

AE1 = 3/123 Johnstone Street

AE3 = West Point Chevalier

AE4 = Auckland

AE5 = 1022

If any elements are missing this will negatively influence the address verification as the overall address matching score will be lowered. The final result will depend on the other fields provided and whether they were successfully matched against the source.

Street types as per NZ Post guide