How does officer matching work, and what do the match fields mean?

When you submit one or more names in officer_names, the response includes two fields that tell you how closely they match the people on the business’s registrations:

• business_officer_match: the best match between any submitted name and any filed officer.

• registered_agent_match: the best match between any submitted name and the registered agent on any of the business’s registrations.

Each takes one of three values:

• EXACT: at least two parts of the name match, typically first and last.

• SIMILAR: the names share a leading fragment but not enough to be exact.

• NO_MATCH: none of the submitted names resemble any filed officer (or agent).

A few things to know:

• Matching is by name only. Registrations do not carry dates of birth or identifiers for officers.

• If a submitted name matches the registered agent, both fields reflect it. This matters when the owner acts as their own agent, and also when a commercial agent service was filed under an officer title.

• The fields are only populated when you submit officer names. If you submit none, they are not returned.

• Every submitted name is also screened against watchlists, whether or not it matches a filed officer.