CHICAGO -

TransUnion acknowledged conventional wisdom suggests the summer months prior to a new school year are most popular for household moves. But a new analysis from the credit bureau found that the higher volume season actually lasts from May all the way through December.

Analysts indicated these findings may be of special benefit to skip-tracers, repossession agents, finance company executives and other collections managers who previously conducted one annual batch file update to their customers' contact information.

More frequent batch updates could result in better opportunities to reach consumers, according to TransUnion.

The TransUnion analysis verified that August, just before the new school year, is the most popular month during which moves occur (representing 10.1 percent of all household move activity).

However, TransUnion executive vice president Tim Martin pointed out that the later months of the year from September (9.6 percent) through December (8.5 percent) are all above-average months for household moves and closer to the peak in August than expected.

“Most collections agencies, financial and insurance companies know they need to update the contact information in their files at least once a year, but many assume the new school year signals a slowdown in household moves,” Martin said.

“Our analysis of consumer address changes found that consumers are constantly moving throughout the year, even in presumed lower volume months such as October, November and December,” he continued.

According to TransUnion's analysis, the lowest moving volumes occur in January, February and March, when the percent of household moves falls between 6 percent and 7.5 percent each month. The amount of household moves spikes as the year progresses into spring, hitting 8 percent by May and peaking in August.

“After the August move peak, collections agencies, financial services companies and insurance providers should strategically update their files in September to include the new address data on consumers or businesses that owe debts,” Martin said.

“However, only conducting one batch update in September would leave companies with inaccurate data for many months as consumers continue to move at year-end,” he went on to say. “We recommend another batch update late in the year, or perhaps at the beginning of the new year.”

The TransUnion analysis reviewed self-reported consumer address changes, insurance filing reports and other data from 2007 to 2014 and found consistent results for all states across the United States.

Martin reiterated TransUnion's TLOxp offers a massive data repository to locate “even the hardest to reach” individuals and businesses that owe debt.

Using the TLOxp batch processing tools, companies can reduce the time to collect and flag, scrub and merge large volumes of data to reduce the need for manual searches.

More information about TLOxp can be found at www.tlo.com.