UK company monitoring

Companies House Monitoring: How to Track UK Company Changes After Onboarding

A practical guide to Companies House monitoring for teams that need to track UK company changes after onboarding, including what the free Follow service covers, where the API helps, and what a reviewable monitoring workflow needs.

Updated 2026-05-2311 min readPrimary keyword: Companies House monitoring

Short answer

Companies House monitoring is the process of watching official UK company records over time instead of checking them manually. A good setup tells you what changed, when it changed, which company it affects, and where the reviewer can verify the source.

Companies House monitoring means tracking changes to UK companies after you already know which businesses matter to you. In practice, that usually means watching Companies House records for status, directors, people with significant control, address changes, filings, charges, and insolvency-related updates.

This is useful for fintechs, KYB products, lenders, procurement teams, B2B platforms, accountancy firms, and merchant-risk teams that need to keep approved companies current after onboarding.

It is not a full KYB, AML, sanctions, or credit-risk platform. It is a narrower control built around official company records.

Why this topic matters now

Companies House has become a more active gatekeeper of UK company data since the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. In its annual report for 2024 to 2025, Companies House said the UK register size was 5.43 million companies as of 31 March 2025 and that the register was accessed 16.3 billion times during the year.

The same report says Companies House queried or removed false, misleading, or inaccurate information relating to 106,300 companies between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. That matters for monitoring because the register is still essential reference data, but it is also going through active reform.

There is also a practical timing reason. Companies House said compulsory identity verification for new directors and PSC appointments began on 18 November 2025, and estimated that 6 to 7 million individuals would need to verify their identity by mid-November 2026 during the transition period.

What is Companies House monitoring?

Companies House monitoring is a workflow for keeping track of changes to a known UK company list over time.

The simplest version is:

  1. Identify the companies you care about.
  2. Match them to the right Companies House company numbers.
  3. Watch for relevant changes.
  4. Classify those changes into something a reviewer can understand.
  5. Keep the evidence link so a human can inspect the official source.

This is the UK-specific version of the broader workflow described in the company monitoring API guide. The difference is that here the source is specifically Companies House rather than a cross-country monitoring layer.

What changes can Companies House monitoring cover?

Companies House monitoring is strongest for official legal-entity changes that appear in the register or filing history.

Useful change areas include:

  • company status changes
  • director and officer changes
  • PSC changes
  • registered office changes
  • filing history updates
  • charges and charge satisfactions
  • insolvency information
  • accounts and confirmation statement activity

The official Companies House API makes basic company information, filing history, officer records, insolvency information, and related resources available through its public API.

Status changes

Status changes help answer whether the company is still trading in the way you expect.

  • active to dissolved
  • active to liquidation
  • administration or insolvency-related changes
  • strike-off or dissolution process changes

Governance changes

Director, officer, and PSC changes help answer who now controls or represents the company.

This matters for ongoing KYB, counterparty review, merchant oversight, and supplier monitoring, especially when the approved record is meant to stay current after onboarding.

Address and identity changes

Registered office changes, name changes, and related identity changes can break internal matching or indicate that the official record no longer lines up with your onboarding file.

Filing and notice activity

A filing alert by itself is often only a starting point. The real value comes from telling the reviewer what changed inside or around that filing, and linking back to the official filing history record.

Free Follow service vs direct API vs a monitoring workflow

Companies House offers a free Follow service in its Find and update company information product. Companies House says this service sends email alerts when company transactions are accepted and includes a link to the filing history page.

That is useful, but it is not the same as a portfolio monitoring workflow.

OptionWhat it does wellWhere it falls short
Free Follow serviceGood for watching an individual company and getting an email when something is filedEmail-first, manual, and not designed as a structured portfolio review system
Direct Companies House APIGives you official data resources for company profile, officers, filing history, insolvency and moreYou still need to build watch creation, polling, classification, deduplication, and delivery
Full monitoring workflowCan turn raw official changes into reviewable alerts tied to known companiesRequires product or vendor work to build and maintain

The direct API is strong, but it is still a toolkit.

Companies House documents:

  • a company profile endpoint
  • officers endpoints
  • filing history endpoints
  • insolvency endpoints
  • a streaming API for real-time data changes
  • a default rate limit of 600 requests per five-minute period per application

The streaming API is especially useful, but Companies House says it requires a long-running connection and allows a maximum of two concurrent connections per account. That is a workable building block, not a complete monitoring product on its own.

Why direct API access is not the whole job

Many teams first ask, "Can we just use the Companies House API?"

Usually the answer is yes for data access, but not for the full monitoring workflow.

If you are monitoring a portfolio, you still need to solve:

  • matching every customer, supplier, merchant, or borrower to the correct company number
  • deciding which events matter and which are routine noise
  • storing evidence links and dates for review
  • deduplicating repeated changes
  • replaying recent changes when a new company is added
  • routing alerts to the right queue, person, or system

That hidden work is the main reason "Companies House monitoring" is a different problem from "Companies House lookup."

A practical Companies House monitoring workflow

For most product and risk teams, the workflow should stay simple.

  1. Start with a known company list from onboarding, underwriting, procurement, or account management.
  2. Resolve each company to the correct Companies House number.
  3. Confirm uncertain matches before monitoring starts.
  4. Create a watch for the confirmed company.
  5. Pull company profile, officer, filing-history, and insolvency data as needed.
  6. Classify the raw changes into clear signal types such as status, governance, address, filing, or insolvency.
  7. Attach the official evidence link to every alert.
  8. Send the matched alerts into an internal review flow.

If your use case is broader than the UK, the same workflow usually needs a country-specific layer for each registry. That is where a broader post-onboarding KYB monitoring guide or a cross-country company monitoring API guide becomes more relevant.

What to look for in a Companies House monitoring setup

Official company-number matching

Monitoring only works if the company is matched correctly. Name-only monitoring is risky when companies have similar names, dissolved predecessors, or related entities.

Reviewable evidence

Every alert should include the company number, change type, detected date, and a direct source link back to Companies House.

Clear change classification

An email saying "a document was filed" is less useful than an alert that says "director resigned" or "company entered liquidation process."

Backfill for new watches

When you add a company today, you may need to know whether something important changed yesterday, last week, or last month.

Portfolio-friendly delivery

The output should fit a real review process: API feed, queue, CSV export, or operational inbox. Monitoring that lives only in scattered inboxes is hard to manage once the company list grows.

How recent Companies House reforms affect monitoring

The UK monitoring picture changed materially between 2025 and 2026.

Companies House says compulsory identity verification for new directors and PSC appointments began on 18 November 2025. Existing directors and PSCs are moving through a transition period tied to confirmation statement cycles, and Companies House has published management information on identity verification compliance.

That does not replace monitoring, but it does make the register more operationally important. Teams reviewing UK counterparties now have another official status area that can matter during ongoing reviews.

How Churnscan fits

Churnscan is built for monitoring official company changes after onboarding, not for broad company enrichment or prospecting.

For UK monitoring specifically, the fit is:

  1. start from a known company list or API request
  2. resolve companies to official records
  3. confirm uncertain matches
  4. create watches
  5. monitor official company changes
  6. return source-backed alerts for review

Churnscan also supports Finland and Norway, which matters for teams that do not want a UK-only workflow.

Want a cleaner workflow than manual register checks?

Upload a company list or connect by API, confirm the right company, create watches, and review source-backed changes in the console.

FAQ

What is Companies House monitoring?

Companies House monitoring means tracking official UK company-record changes over time instead of manually rechecking each company one by one.

What can you monitor with Companies House?

The most useful areas are company status, directors and officers, PSCs, registered office changes, filing history, charges, and insolvency-related information.

Is the free Companies House Follow service enough?

It can be enough for occasional single-company monitoring. It is usually not enough for a structured portfolio workflow because it is centered on email alerts rather than reviewable watchlists and matched signals.

Does the Companies House API solve monitoring by itself?

No. It gives you official data access, but you still need matching, watch logic, classification, deduplication, backfill, and alert delivery.

Who needs Companies House monitoring?

It is most useful for teams with known UK company portfolios after onboarding, such as fintechs, KYB products, lenders, procurement teams, accountancy firms, merchant-risk teams, and B2B platforms.

Sources and further reading