Protect Your Company
The Home Office states that identity fraud costs Britain 1.7 billion pounds a year. Protect your corporate identity now before it’s too late.
It is much more expensive than previously estimated. "These findings confirm the sheer scale of the threat posed by identity fraud to individual citizens, private companies, and government bodies alike," Home Office minister Andy Burnham said.
Corporate identity theft is therefore a major cost to UK industry and it is on the increase. It affects businesses across all sectors. The fraudsters can change the registered office and directors of a company, thus effectively stealing the company's identity, simply by lodging forged forms at Companies House. Companies House receives the documents in good faith and does not have the resources to check that the documents are genuine.
In every case you are unlikely to find out what has happened until it is far too late. This could fatally impact your business in the following ways:
- Your company assets could be stolen and the bank accounts emptied by the criminals who have fraudulently appointed themselves as directors of your company.
- Your company identity could be stolen by the fraudsters who would then trade on the basis of your company credit history, by ordering goods and services on credit, for which you would probably be sued for the eventual payment.
- Your company could sell goods or services to fraudsters who have stolen a legitimate company's identity and you may never receive payment for the goods or services you have supplied.
The subsequent consequences could even affect your personal assets and credit history.
Your subscription would ensure that you would be informed of any documents filed at Companies House (the official UK processor of company information) that would change the registered office, the board of directors, or the legally registered mortgages. In addition you would be notified of any newly filed accounts, annual returns or changes to the share capital. If any of the aforementioned are filed, you would receive an email notification explaining what has been filed and its potential impact, together with an attached electronic copy of the actual document filed.
This would allow you to immediately review the document filed in order to check whether you knew about this corporate action and whether it is a genuine filing by your company. Remember as a director you have a duty to protect the assets of your company. Companies House is not obliged by law to check whether documents submitted are genuine, you should therefore check that the documents being filed with Companies House are not false.
