As part of Continental’s commitment to provide our customers and their shareholders with the best possible service, we have incorporated the use of the National Change of Address Database (NCOA) as part of our suite of services.

What is NCOA?

NCOA is a secure dataset of approximately 160 million permanent change-of-address (COA) records consisting of the names and addresses of individuals, families and businesses who have filed a change-of-address notice with the USPS. The NCOA database is maintained by the United States Postal Service and access to it is licensed to service providers and made available to mailers.

How does this help you?

Continental matches shareholder addresses against the NCOA database and receives back a file with both the old and new address. Continental will then perform a mailing to both the old and new address requesting confirmation from the shareholder of the new address prior to updating our records. This search process in conjunction with Continental’s lost shareholder searches and due diligence mailings ensure that we minimize the number of lost shareholders, thereby reducing the number of shareholder records being turned over to the states as abandoned property. This benefits issuers by reducing abandoned property filing costs and minimizing shareholder angst by not having their assets turned over to the states.

An additional benefit of using the NCOA process is that it allows Continental to maintain discounted mail rates which helps reduce mailing costs to our customers. We process our files through the NCOA database every 95 days so we can keep our shareholder addresses as up to date as possible.