Policies

Policies define the thresholds that determine whether contact data is accepted, flagged for review, or rejected. Every verify call evaluates results against a policy to produce an actionable recommendation.

Built-in policies

Reach ships with four policies covering common use cases:

Policy	Address Confidence	Match Level	Email Confidence	Phone Required	Use case
strict	0.90	premise	0.85	yes	KYC, fraud prevention, compliance
shipping	0.70	street	0.50	no	Physical delivery, e-commerce
standard	0.55	street	0.45	no	General verification (default)
permissive	0.30	locality	0.30	no	Lead capture, marketing

Choosing a policy

strict — KYC and fraud prevention

Requires premise-level address matching (0.90 confidence), high email confidence (0.85), and phone verification. Use for financial services, identity verification, and any flow where false positives are costly.

shipping — Physical delivery

Requires street-level matching (0.70 confidence) and moderate email confidence (0.50). Phone is optional. Use for e-commerce checkout, delivery address validation, and logistics.

standard — General purpose

The default policy. Requires street-level matching (0.55 confidence) and basic email confidence (0.45). Suitable for most use cases where you want verification without being overly restrictive.

permissive — Lead capture

Accepts locality-level matching (0.30 confidence) with minimal thresholds. Use for lead forms, newsletter signups, and scenarios where you want to capture data even if it’s imprecise.

Using a policy

CLI

lqt verify -a "10 Downing St, London, GB" --policy shipping -o json

Environment variable

macOS / Linux
Windows (PowerShell)

export LOQATE_POLICY=shipping
lqt verify -a "10 Downing St, London, GB" -o json

$env:LOQATE_POLICY="shipping"
lqt verify -a "10 Downing St, London, GB" -o json

Policy resolution order

When multiple policy sources are present, Reach resolves in this order:

--policy-file flag (custom policy JSON file)
--policy flag (named built-in policy)
LOQATE_POLICY environment variable
.loqate-policy.json file in the current directory
standard (default)

Custom policies

Create a JSON file to define your own thresholds:

custom-policy.json

{
  "name": "my-ecommerce-policy",
  "description": "Balanced policy for e-commerce checkout",
  "address": {
    "min_confidence": 0.65,
    "min_match_level": "street",
    "reject_verification_status": ["U", "R"]
  },
  "email": {
    "min_confidence": 0.50,
    "allow_catch_all": true,
    "reject_disposable": true
  },
  "phone": {
    "min_confidence": 0.40,
    "required": false
  }
}

Custom policy fields

Address

Field	Type	Description
`min_confidence`	number	Minimum confidence score (0–1) to accept
`min_match_level`	string	Minimum match level: `premise`, `street`, `locality`, `administrative_area`, `country`
`reject_verification_status`	array	Verification statuses to auto-reject (e.g., `["U", "R"]`)

Email

Field	Type	Description
`min_confidence`	number	Minimum confidence score (0–1) to accept
`allow_catch_all`	boolean	Whether to accept catch-all email domains
`reject_disposable`	boolean	Whether to reject disposable/temporary email domains

Phone

Field	Type	Description
`min_confidence`	number	Minimum confidence score (0–1) to accept
`required`	boolean	Whether phone verification is mandatory

Validate a custom policy

lqt policy validate custom-policy.json

Use a custom policy

lqt verify -a "10 Downing St, London, GB" --policy-file custom-policy.json -o json

Register via MCP

In an MCP session, use the set_policy tool to register a custom policy for the current session. This is useful when your agent needs to switch policies based on context.

Getting Started

Reach CLI

MCP Server

IBM watsonx Orchestrate

Reference

Built-in policies

Choosing a policy

Using a policy

CLI

Environment variable

Policy resolution order

Custom policies

Custom policy fields

Address

Email

Phone

Validate a custom policy

Use a custom policy

Register via MCP

​Built-in policies

​Choosing a policy

​Using a policy

​CLI

​Environment variable

​Policy resolution order

​Custom policies

​Custom policy fields

​Address

​Email

​Phone

​Validate a custom policy

​Use a custom policy

​Register via MCP

Built-in policies

Choosing a policy

Using a policy

CLI

Environment variable

Policy resolution order

Custom policies

Custom policy fields

Address

Email

Phone

Validate a custom policy

Use a custom policy

Register via MCP