SavvyIQ

Entities and Candidates

What are entities vs candidates?

Entities are confirmed records in our system anchored to government identifiers with high confidence. These permanent records can be referenced consistently across all SavvyIQ APIs.

Candidates represent our best available hypothesis for a given search when we cannot create a confirmed entity record. Candidates are returned in two scenarios:

  1. When confidence levels are insufficient to distinctly identify the entity
  2. When the entity type is not yet fully supported in our platform

Candidates deliver valuable research insights while maintaining strict data integrity standards in our core system.

Why we focus on legal entities first

Our system is built around government records and uses government identifiers as the foundation of our ID system. We started with incorporated entities, which are businesses that are separate legal entities (LLCs, corporations, etc.), because:

  • Government IDs are publicly available for these entity types
  • They represent the majority of business entities our customers work with
  • We can ensure data integrity and prevent duplicates using official identifiers
  • They have standardized legal structures that map across various jurisdictions

This approach allows us to provide the highest confidence and most reliable entity resolution.

Different entity types and their challenges

Currently Supported:

  • Incorporated entities (corporations, LLCs, etc.)

Challenging Entity Types (Roadmap):

  • Sole Proprietors: The legal entity is ultimately the individual person, whose identifier would be a SSN (private data)
  • Partnerships: Similar to sole proprietors, anchored to private individual identifiers
  • Government Entities: Different identifier systems and structures
  • Funds: Very different ownership structures than corporations
  • Nonprofits: Different regulatory frameworks
  • Exotic Entities (SPACs, etc.): Complex structures with varying identifier availability

Entity types and legal structures in our API

Our API categorizes entities using two classification systems:

Organization Types:

  • business - Commercial entities
  • nonprofit - Nonprofit organizations
  • government - Government entities
  • person - Individual people/sole proprietors
  • other - Other entity types
  • unknown - Could not determine type

Subtypes (Legal Structures):

  • incorporated_entity - Corporations (C-Corp, S-Corp, etc.), LLCs with government registration
  • unincorporated_entity - Partnerships, sole proprietorships
  • nonprofit_entity - Registered nonprofit organizations
  • government_entity - Government agencies and departments
  • natural_person - Individual person (not a business entity)
  • complex_business_structure - Special purpose vehicles, joint ventures, professional corporations, or entities with mixed legal characteristics
  • trading_name_only - DBA/trade names where the underlying legal structure is unknown
  • other_entity - International organizations, trusts, funds, etc.
  • unknown - Could not determine structure

Example API Response:

{
  "type": "business",
  "subtype": "incorporated_entity"
}

When entities become candidates vs confirmed records

Confirmed Entities are created when:

  • type is business AND subtype is incorporated_entity
  • We can anchor to a government identifier with high confidence
  • Our research provides sufficient verification

Candidates are returned when:

  • Any type other than business
  • Any subtype other than incorporated_entity
  • Confidence score is below our threshold for creating a permanent record
  • Multiple potential matches exist without clear disambiguation

Note: Currently, only businesses with incorporated entity structures become confirmed entities in our system.

Government identifier foundation

Our system uses government records as the bedrock for entity identification because:

  • Data Integrity: Official government IDs prevent duplicate records
  • Reliability: Government databases provide authoritative business information
  • Consistency: Standard identifiers work across different data sources
  • Verification: Official registration confirms business legitimacy

We integrate with government databases to access core legal entity information that forms the foundation of each entity record.

Future roadmap for expanded entity type support

We're working on expanding support for additional entity types by:

Short-term:

  • Enhanced candidate handling for unsupported entity types
  • Improved confidence scoring across different entity structures

Medium-term:

  • Synthetic identifier systems for entities without public government IDs
  • Support for sole proprietorships and partnerships
  • Nonprofit and government entity integration

Long-term:

  • Comprehensive coverage of all entity types customers work with
  • Advanced disambiguation for complex ownership structures
  • Industry-specific entity type support

Our goal is to maintain the same high standards of data integrity and deduplication as we expand to cover the full spectrum of business entities.

Next Steps:

  1. Try it: Entity Resolution API - See entities and candidates in action
  2. Learn more: Identifiers - Understanding our entity ID system
  3. Advanced: Confidence and Explainability - Learn how confidence affects entity vs candidate results