Companies House can verify a director. It cannot vouch for the company.

Companies House identity verification confirms that a director or person with significant control is the person they claim to be. It does not assess the company’s creditworthiness, payment behaviour, financial capacity or connected-company risk. Verified identity improves the register — but it is not a recommendation to extend credit.

The people behind UK companies are being formally verified for the first time. Mandatory identity verification began on 18 November 2025 under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act, and Companies House expects six to seven million directors and PSCs to have verified by mid-November 2026. For credit teams, it is worth being clear about what that closes — and what it leaves exactly where it was.

What does Companies House identity verification prove?

The mechanics are phased, not a single deadline. New directors have needed to verify since 18 November 2025, at incorporation or appointment. Existing directors confirm verification alongside their company’s next annual confirmation statement, during a 12-month transition. PSCs have their own 14-day windows, which differ depending on whether they are also directors. Each person’s date arrives with their company’s filing cycle — which is why the rollout completes around mid-November 2026 rather than on one day. Verification runs through GOV.UK One Login or an authorised provider; once verified, a personal code ties the person to each role they hold. Acting as an unverified director once duties commence is an offence, though Companies House has said its enforcement approach will be proportionate.

What this fixes is real. The register has always recorded claims — names typed into forms — rather than verified facts, and business identity fraud walked through that gap: it never tried to beat anyone’s checks, it chose what the checks saw. Verification closes the cheapest version of that route, and every credit decision that leans on the register benefits from the cleaner data.

What identity verification cannot tell a credit team

Verification answers one question: is this person who they claim to be? A credit decision needs four:

• Identity. Is this the correct person? Verification now strengthens this directly.
• Authority. Are they connected to the company the way they claim — and what else are they connected to? Verification touches the first half; connected-company risk it does not reach.
• Behaviour. How does the company actually conduct itself — payment conduct, filing conduct, court records, over time? Not covered.
• Capacity. How much exposure can this company support? Not covered.

Verification strengthens the first question and part of the second. The third and fourth — the questions that decide whether you get paid — remain exactly where they were. A company can be run by a fully verified director and still pay slowly, still depend on a failing group, still be six months from a winding-up petition. Verified is not vouched for.

How should lenders interpret filing disruption during the transition?

Between now and November 2026, verification deadlines land company by company, alongside each confirmation statement. Some filings will be late or held up for administrative reasons — an unverified director, a PSC mid-process — rather than because anything is wrong with the business. Filing drift has long been a useful distress proxy; during the transition it becomes a noisier one.

That cuts both ways. A single late confirmation statement inside the window deserves less alarm than usual — check whether verification friction explains it before treating it as deterioration. But it should not be waved through either: a company that cannot organise identity verification for its own directors may also be telling you something about how it is run. The practical rule is that filing signals need reading in combination — with payment behaviour, court activity and structural change — rather than flagging in isolation. The transition makes signal interpretation more valuable, not less. It also sits inside a broader rewrite of the rules UK trade credit runs on — the 60-day payment terms legislation is reshaping the other side of the same relationship.

A more trustworthy register raises the floor for everyone who extends credit. But identity is where a credit decision begins, not where it is made. Verification tells you who they are. It has no opinion on whether to give them £50,000 of terms — that answer lives in how the company behaves over time, and behaviour only shows up if someone is watching between the filings.

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