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AFD Refiner 3

The latest release of AFD’s data cleansing engine, Refiner 3, is benchmarked as best-in-class! With multiple deployment options which now include server-based and hosted offerings, with a thin client front end, for ease of use and integration. Refiner can also be installed locally on both Windows and Linux platforms for blisteringly fast performance.

Phone numbers and email addresses can now be bulk validated and confirmed as live using Refiners powerful batch processing engine.

A wider range of datasets can now be appended to your database including: geodemographic data (relative affluence, life stage and lifestyle) for segmentation, and grid references (longitude/latitude) to pinpoint a geographic location.

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Easy to Integrate

Refiner 3’s powerful cleansing solution can be accessed in a variety of ways removing common barriers to cleaning data.

The team at AFD can process the data on your behalf, Refiner 3 can be flexibly deployed in a host of environments which now including server-based and hosted offerings, with a thin client front end. Supported on both Windows and Linux.

Visit our Developer Area using the button below to find out more.

Developer Area
Read the full case study
Last year we sent 12 million pieces of mail with complete confidence. AFD Refiner delivers exactly what we expect it to - we put poor data in and get good data out.
Simon Swan
Head of Data and Mailing at Lonsdale Direct Solutions
  • Bulk cleanse address data
  • Bulk validate email and phone data
  • Eliminates poor spelling
  • Standardises capitalisation
  • Prepares and reformats data for new systems
  • Gets address data ready to merge with different databases
  • Identifies duplicate records ready for removal
  • Appends grid references for geocoding and “where’s my nearest” services
  • Cleanses records originally entered without validation
  • Cleanse against the latest available data
  • Maximum automated match rates for efficiency

Refiner works with the data you have – not the data we wish you had:

  • Visual, flexible attachment of your data to Royal Mail data
  • Uses full Royal Mail PAF® based address data cleansing
  • Handles awkward input data structures
  • Totally flexible data output structures
  • Accepts wide variety of database formats
  • Supports ODBC connectivity
  • Customises with totally flexible output data structures
  • Comprehensive reports

Refiner delivers top match rates not erroneous ones:

  • Handles apartments and flats with ease
  • Uses Postally Not Required locality names
  • Corrects “mistypes” without mismatching
  • Displays ambiguous results for easy user selection
  • Support for Postcode / Town and Locality changes

Refiner offers choice:

  • Options for street and/or letterbox level matching
  • Geo-coding – adds grid references to postcode data fast
  • Attach mode – adds any Postcode Plus data set to your database
  • Marks records for easy duplication
  • Improves addresses which cannot be PAF cleansed
  • Line Squeeze allows you to squeeze your address data except the postcode (property, street, locality, town) into a smaller number of fields.
  • Borrow function can be used within Refiner to search for and insert an address when no match or a partial match has been found.


Refiner 3 can operate with Delimited (e.g., comma separated, tab delimited), Fixed Width Text files, and ODBC (32-bit) Connections to Microsoft Access and MYSQL Databases (providing a DSN for that data source has been set-up on your system).

  • Organisation
  • Property
  • Street
  • Locality
  • Town
  • County (Postal, Traditional, Optional, Abbreviated or Administrative)
  • Postcode
  • DPS (Delivery Point Suffix)
  • STD Codes
  • Grid Easting and Northing
  • Latitude and Longitude
  • Mailsort Code
  • Household Count
  • Bartholomew Maps
  • Local or Unitary Authority
  • Ward Code
  • Constituency
  • T.V. Region (not company)
  • NHS Code / NHS Area / NHS Region Code / NHS Region Name
  • European Electoral Region (EER) Code and Name
  • Lower and Middle level Super Output Area (SOA)
  • Primary Care Trusts (PCT)
  • Occupancy / Address type indicator
  • Censation™ Geodemographic Data
  • AFD Just Built
  • UDPRN (Unique Delivery Point Reference Number – BS7666)
  • UPRN
  • Local Education Authority (LEA) Code and Name
  • Devolved Constituency Name
  • POLAR3 Young
  • POLAR3 Adult
  • POLAR4
  • The Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD)
  • LEP Code and Name
  • Adult Education Budget (AEB) Area, Source, Effective From/To
  • Business data – cleanse organisation and address data, append sector, turnover and employee data

Video Demonstration

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We are here to help

We serve thousands of organisations and a network of hundreds of partners across multiple industry sectors, enabling them to have full confidence in their contact data.