UK Company Due Diligence: 5 Red Flags to Check in 3 Minutes

Most people check if a company exists. Almost nobody checks if it's actually alive.

A company can be "Active" on Companies House and still be a complete mess — no filed accounts for 18 months, three director resignations in a year, a registered address that's a PO box in Wolverhampton shared with 200 other companies.

Here's a quick 5-point filing check that takes under 3 minutes and catches most of the obvious red flags:

1. Accounts overdue? If confirmation statements or accounts are late, that's not admin. That's a warning sign.

2. Director turnover. One resignation is normal. Three in 12 months means something's wrong internally.

3. Registered address. Mass-registration addresses are common in shell setups. Google the postcode.

4. Age vs. revenue. A 6-month-old company pitching you a £500k contract deserves extra scrutiny. Check when it was incorporated, not just when it reached out.

5. SIC code mismatch. Does their stated business activity actually match what they're selling you? Mismatches happen — sometimes innocently, sometimes not.

None of this requires expensive software or a compliance team. It requires about 180 seconds and knowing where to look.

The real issue is that most professionals skip this entirely until something goes wrong. By then you're chasing invoices, explaining to management how you onboarded a dissolved entity, or — worst case — filing a SAR.

Build the habit before the problem, not after.

If you want all of this in one place without the manual digging, Borsch.ai pulls it together automatically: https://borsch.ai