UK charge monitoring
Companies House Charges Monitoring: How to Track Mortgage and Charge Filings After Onboarding
A practical guide to Companies House charges monitoring after onboarding, including MR01 registrations, MR04 satisfactions, charge status changes, source evidence, and review workflows.
Short answer
Companies House charges monitoring means tracking official charge records and charge-related filings for UK companies after onboarding. The useful alert is not "secured debt risk" by itself. It is a source-backed signal showing which company filed a new charge, satisfaction, release, or charge-status update that a reviewer should inspect.
A UK company can pass onboarding with no active secured-debt concern, then later register a charge, partially satisfy a charge, or file a satisfaction statement. If your team manages merchants, borrowers, suppliers, vendors, or B2B customers, that change can matter before the next scheduled review.
This guide focuses on official Companies House charge records and filings. It does not replace credit scoring, cash-flow analysis, legal advice, UCC-style lien searches outside the UK, sanctions screening, adverse media, or lending decisions.
Why charges monitoring matters after onboarding
Charges are one of the official record types that can change after a company has already been approved. A new charge may show that a lender or other secured party has taken security. A satisfaction filing may show that an existing charge has been paid or satisfied in full or in part. A release can change what property remains covered.
The monitoring problem is practical: these updates sit inside a very active register. Companies House reported 14.7 million accepted filings and 16.3 billion register accesses for the year ending 31 March 2025. A team with thousands of UK companies in its portfolio should not rely on manual profile checks to discover charge-related changes.
Charges monitoring is most useful when it is tied to known company relationships. Start from the company number you already approved, track the official charge record, preserve the filing evidence, and route only reviewable changes to the team that owns the relationship.
What is a company charge at Companies House?
A company charge is a registered mortgage or charge against a UK registered company. Companies House says form MR01 is used to register particulars of a mortgage or charge created on or after 6 April 2013 for a UK registered company.
For monitoring, the important point is not the form name. The important point is that charge events become official company record changes that can be fetched, stored, compared, and linked back to the source.
A reviewable charge alert should identify the company, the charge, the current status, the relevant filing or transaction, the source date, and the evidence URL. Without those details, the alert becomes another manual lookup task.
Which charge changes should you track?
Not every charge event has the same meaning. A practical monitoring workflow should separate new security events, status changes, and administrative filings so reviewers know what they are looking at.
New charge registrations
A new MR01-style registration is usually the clearest trigger. Companies House guidance says correctly completed MR01 documents must be delivered within 21 days beginning the day after the charge was created. A monitoring alert should preserve both the charge created date and the delivered or filing date when the source provides them.
Outstanding and part-satisfied charges
Charge status is useful review context. The Companies House charge details resource lists status values including outstanding, fully satisfied, part satisfied, and satisfied. A newly outstanding charge may call for a different review than a charge that has been part-satisfied or fully satisfied.
Satisfaction statements
Form MR04 is used to register a statement of satisfaction in full or in part. Companies House guidance says that when an MR04 is registered and denoted in full, the charge is marked as fully satisfied but remains on the company record. That distinction matters because a monitoring workflow should update status instead of assuming the charge disappears.
Releases and changed charged property
Some charge filings relate to property being released or no longer forming part of the charged property. These changes may be lower priority than a new charge, but they are still useful evidence when a reviewer needs to understand the current company record.
What does the Companies House API provide?
Companies House exposes charges through its Public Data API. The official API reference lists a charge list endpoint at GET /company/{company_number}/charges and a charge detail endpoint at GET /company/{company_number}/charges/{charge_id}.
Companies House also documents a charges stream that returns company charge information. The stream can deliver events after connection and can start from a supplied timepoint where the timepoint is valid.
API access is only one part of the workflow. A monitoring system still needs to match each portfolio company to the correct company number, keep a cursor or replay strategy, deduplicate charge updates, fetch enough detail for review, and attach the source evidence to the final signal.
Charges monitoring vs general filing monitoring
Charges monitoring is related to company filing monitoring, but it deserves its own review rules. Filing monitoring asks "what new official document appeared?" Charges monitoring asks "did the company's registered security position change in a way the relationship owner should review?"
| Question | General filing monitoring | Charges monitoring |
|---|---|---|
| Primary event | Any new official filing or filing-history item | New charge, satisfaction, release, or charge-status update |
| Best anchor | Company number plus filing transaction ID | Company number plus charge ID or charge code |
| Review context | Filing type, filing date, description, and document link | Charge status, created date, delivered date, persons entitled, and transactions |
| Main risk of noise | Routine filings can bury material changes | Administrative charge updates can look more urgent than they are |
What should a charges alert include?
A charge alert should be readable before the reviewer opens Companies House. The source link still matters, but the alert should already explain what changed.
- Company name and Companies House company number
- Charge ID, charge code, or filing transaction reference
- Signal type, such as new charge or charge satisfied
- Current charge status
- Created date, delivered date, filing date, or event date
- Persons entitled, where the source provides them
- Plain-English summary of the changed record
- Source URL, filing URL, or registry profile URL
- Detected date in your monitoring system
- Previous value and new value when the alert is a status change
This shape helps teams triage charges consistently. A lender may care about different charge events than a supplier-risk team, but both need the same basic evidence trail.
A practical charges monitoring workflow
Use this workflow when charges are part of your post-approval company review process.
- Resolve each UK company to the correct Companies House company number.
- Store the company number as the monitoring anchor; do not rely on company name alone.
- Fetch the current charge list or consume charge events where a stream is appropriate.
- Store a baseline of charge IDs, statuses, persons entitled, dates, and source links.
- Compare new source data with the stored baseline.
- Classify reviewable events: new charge, status change, satisfaction, release, or unknown charge update.
- Deduplicate events before sending them to a feed or review queue.
- Attach the official source evidence so the reviewer can verify the change.
- Keep the alert narrow. Do not turn a charge filing into a credit decision without separate credit and legal review.
Who needs this monitoring?
Charges monitoring is most useful for teams that already manage ongoing relationships with UK companies and need an official-record trigger before the next periodic review.
- Lenders and credit platforms watching borrowers after approval
- Merchant-risk teams monitoring companies with settlement or delivery exposure
- Supplier-risk and procurement teams watching important UK vendors
- B2B marketplaces monitoring sellers, partners, or service providers
- KYB and onboarding products adding post-onboarding official registry alerts
For broader context, read the post-onboarding KYB monitoring guide and the Companies House monitoring guide.
How Churnscan fits
Churnscan monitors official company registry changes after onboarding. For UK companies, the product flow starts with a known company list or API request, resolves companies to official records, creates watches, polls official sources, and returns source-backed signals for review.
Churnscan is not a credit bureau, lender, legal-advice product, AML suite, sanctions tool, or sales-enrichment database. It is a focused monitoring layer for official registry changes affecting companies you already watch.
If charge-related filings are part of your review model, treat them as one official-source signal alongside status changes, filings, director changes, address changes, PSC changes, and insolvency-related updates.
FAQ
What is Companies House charges monitoring?
Companies House charges monitoring means watching official UK company charge records and charge-related filings for companies you already track, then routing new charges, changed charge status, satisfactions, releases, and source evidence into a review workflow.
What is a company charge at Companies House?
A company charge is a registered mortgage or charge against a UK company. Companies House records charge details such as the charge identifier, created date, delivered date, persons entitled, transactions, and status.
Which charge changes should trigger review?
Useful triggers include a new charge registration, an outstanding charge, a part-satisfied charge, a fully satisfied charge, a release, a changed persons-entitled record, and a charge transaction that appears in filing history.
Can Companies House charges be monitored through an API?
Yes. Companies House exposes charges through its Public Data API and also documents a charges stream for charge events. A monitoring workflow still needs matching, cursor recovery, deduplication, evidence storage, and review rules.
Is charges monitoring the same as credit scoring?
No. Charges monitoring tracks official charge records and filings. It can support review workflows, but it does not replace credit scoring, lending decisions, financial analysis, or legal review.
Sources and further reading
Monitor source-backed UK company changes
Use Churnscan to upload a company list or connect by API, confirm official matches, create watches, and review source-backed Companies House changes after onboarding.