Surprisingly, identifying the appropriate state of escheatment is not as easy as it sounds. To put it in perspective, our solution has successfully yielded net improvements in excess of 93%, with regard to our ability to successfully validate a legitimate state of escheatment, when measured against a traditional United States Postal Service (USPS) address verification database. This effort can be especially challenging because of the age of many abandoned accounts, in conjunction with the poor condition of the account holder file stemming from not having been able to update accurate account owner information for an extended period of time. Because many abandoned accounts were established so long ago, some actually pre-date the invention of Zip codes. Additionally, many of the streets, towns and cities reflected in lapsed account holder files either no longer exist, or have had their physical boundaries redrawn. Even those accounts that were created more recently can cause problems. For example, there are Zip code changes every year that coincide with demographic trends, population growth and industry development. Confusion over the appropriate acronym for each state is also a problem. For example, it is not unusual for someone to mis-abbreviate Arizona’s state code as ‘AR’, rather than ‘AZ’. In actuality, ‘AR’ is the state code for Arkansas, but people often use ‘AK’ for Arkansas, when ‘AK’ is really the state code for Alaska… Of course, some people use ‘AL’ for Alaska, when it is really the state code of Alabama! There is routinely confusion with all of the ‘M’ state codes, as well as many others. Together, these address hygiene problems render most data parsing tools ineffective. Combine these challenges with a lack of clear documented procedures explaining exactly how to “title” each account and you can begin to get a feel for the scope of this problem. Another point worth noting is that identifying the proper state is not the only requirement. It is also important to be able to provide support documentation substantiating each escheat recommendation. This combination of circumstances requires a unique solution, which is available through Cross Country Computer Corp!