REVIEW OF THE UK REGISTER OF COMPANIES

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2. REVIEW OF THE UK REGISTER OF COMPANIES Helen Thewlis Head of Policy and Planning, Companies House, UK

3. This presentation • Purpose of the review • UK Register • Findings • Emerging ideas • Conclusions

4. Purpose of the Review Considering the register : • users’ point of view • rationale and value it adds to the UK economy • whether it could be operated differently • potential to reduce burden on business

5. 2009-10 by numbers 590,114,598 online search page hits 340m Images of documents 35km shelves of paper documents 6m downloaded documents 2,630,383 companies 8,700,887 docs filed last year

6. Findings – what surprised us • Breadth of the register searched • Kinds of search • Personal interest aspect • Link to press and media • Types of company searched

7. Findings • 185m hits on free information pages last year • 450k free searches a day • 86% of searches are for free information • 13.5m paid searches • 15% of companies accessed on a given day • 22% accessed over a 2 day period

8. Worldwide Website Visitors Ireland France India Netherlands Spain Australia China Other

9. Most useful free information

10. Types of entity searched for free

11. Age of information searched • Recent information most searched • Less than 2 years • 83% of Accounts • 91% Annual Returns • Over 2 years • less frequent, but still significant up to 15 years old • older information used for forensic & court cases

12. Why do people search? • Public: • Inform buying decision - property, cars, repairs, entertainment, • Deal with consumer problems, disputes • Check companies in the news • Business: • Make financial assessments • Check suppliers, directors • Checking dormant companies • Check their own information • Check disqualified directors

13. What information is paid for?

14. Feedback from Registers • Use aligns with ours • None had carried out similar work • Not all could indicate proportion of the register searched • Most searched - Officers, basic details, financial info • One had reduced administrative burden

15. Problems with the information • Most relate to what CH does: • Data entry error, wrong documents, duplicates • Some about the information itself • 3.5% of accounts don’t add up • Concern about Dates of Birth • Few complaints about fraud: • 83 average per month out of 700k filings (0.01%)

16. Emerging Ideas • More information wanted not less • Turnover • Number of employees • Qualified Accountants • Whether accounts are late filed • Contact details, Postcodes • Name reservations • Linking group companies together • Better ways of searching

17. Conclusions • 100% found it useful • Rationale not really tested • Hard to estimate value to the economy • Wide & broad use – especially free info • Too early to think about asking for less info • We need to invest in deeper customer understanding • Fraudulent activity relatively low

18. ECRF • Have you completed similar work? • We’d welcome comments and information from more registries • Possibly include questions in benchmarking survey

19. Questions?

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