Company House Check: Best Sites to Get Information about a Company in the UK

There are some people who make friends easily but they don’t do so with total strangers. They first try to know them well before introducing them to others as their friends.

The same concept applies when it comes to collaborating with companies. You must dig deep into their financial health, market reputation, working domain, customers and more before pitching, buying their shares, working for them, supplying products, etc.

Doing some research on a search engine such as Google or using other tools can help you gather more information about it.

So which are the best sites to get information about a company in the UK? This article will answer this question. Finding details about a certain company can be an easy and interesting task.

Companies House (UK)

Company registrations for Wales and England are carried out at Companies House in Cardiff, registrations in Scotland are done at the Edinburgh office and North Ireland are based in the Belfast office. The London office provides search services and document delivery.

Indeed, the UK register is among the most open while its economy is ranked among the most transparent in the world. One of the reasons is that users can access information about a specific company from the date it was incorporated and registered to its operation to its shareholding, free of charge.

The Companies House register had 4.99 million businesses as of October 2021 and more than 780,000 businesses were registered in 2020. Therefore, you can obtain any company data here using powerful filtering tools to help you navigate the dataset.

The law requires all the private and public companies to be registered and incorporated with Companies House. So all businesses including corporates, large enterprises, small businesses, and startups have a short profile on this government-run body as long as they are operating in the UK.

Companies House shows businesses’ legal status instead of trading status which includes:

Active: A company that has been incorporated and its name added to the register. However, some companies can still be marked as active yet they are not actually trading or are dormant.

Administration: This applies to businesses that can’t pay their debts and that are seeking legal protection from their creditors. However, such a company has to appoint a licensed insolvency practitioner to take over the control of the company and its assets, in order to prevent it from going into liquidation. Still, the administrator can opt to use the remaining assets to pay off the company’s debt as much as possible.

Liquidation: This is the status of a business that has stopped its operation and its assets are used to repay as much debt as possible. Shareholders are paid from any remaining money after clearing the company debts.

Dissolution: A company in this state has stopped existing as a legal entity. This is different from liquidation because it’s only solvent companies that are dissolved.

You will find information such as a registered address, annual accounts, event-based filings, directors profile, company roles, shareholdings, etc.

While there is a lot of information that you can find on Companies House, there are still some vital details that are not available on this site. For instance, you can easily find information about companies that you already know about but not new ones.

Actually, it’s possible to find a company registered under one name on the Companies House registry but files their financials using another name.

Further, the site doesn’t guarantee that the information that these businesses submit is accurate and reliable. Each company must file accurate information and if not, Companies House will still upload and file even the incorrect one it receives from businesses.

AeroLeads

The platform scours through the internet to dig out all the information you need about a particular company. AeroLeads will tell you about the phone number, email, and other fine details.

With the help of AI, the tool extracts accurate, updated information which you can import to an email marketing service provider tool or export into the sales CRM.

You can use AeroLeads as a web app or Google Chrome extension. The latter is helpful when you want to find out about a particular company while browsing.

LinkedIn

This is a professional platform that connects people to the professional world, grows the business and increases the network. LinkedIn is famous for its diverse B2B database and a platform for people to learn and grow. As a result, it’s hard to find fake accounts here than it is on other social media platforms.

Users can search for companies and extract information using different criteria such as the industry, company size, location, employment opportunities and its position in the Fortune 500.

Once you have obtained the company information using the lead generation tools, you can use the details to contact, email, and collaborate with them or more.

Further, the platform tells you about the company’s connections but it doesn’t give any user-based business reviews.

Glassdoor

The platform provides employees’ reviews which is the best way of finding a company’s hidden details. It’s extremely difficult to talk to each employee personally about their employer but Glassdoor has eased that process.

The site has user-submitted feedback or employee-generated content that is missing in LinkedIn. There are over 3 million people’s reviews, average salary details, experiences, benefits, pros and cons, as well as interview tips. Such information gives you a detailed insight into the company’s working culture and internal environment.

Still, the platform allows you to contact the current and previous employees of these companies so that you can find more information from them. This is particularly important if you’re about to join or invest in the company.

Corporate Information

The site has records of more than 38,000 public companies spread across 75 countries. A user can obtain corporate and industry information here which is helpful for investing, research and competitive analysis.

Important information that you can extract from Corporate Information includes corporate profiles, industry-specific reports, international company directories listings, state-by-state America-based company information sources and more.

You can get started right away because registration on this site is completely free.

Reuters

The company provides information such as recent buying and selling activity and the list of institutional stockholders. Other information includes the directors and executives, their roles, analysts ‘reports and inside industry news.

Reuters is known for providing unbiased news with accurate figures or statistics from reliable sources which most sites fail to do so. Therefore it’s advisable to regularly update your database using corporate information from Reuters.

Google News

You can easily get vital company’s information and its latest news from Google News. With the relevant knowledge and communication, you can extract the exact information you’re looking for.

On the Google News site, you will find different articles such as directors and executives’ contact information, financial statements, press releases, and pending litigations.

The Individual Company Website

Companies have gone digital which makes it easy to find their advisories, press releases, financial documents, audit and annual reports among others.

While companies are required to maintain transparency with statistics in their reports or announcements not all of them maintain that standard. In fact, some of them do things differently for the sake of marketing and branding.

Directories

Using the filter option on the website, you can look for the company you’re interested in based on the ZIP code. This has been made easier because companies are linked with Google Maps.

Still, the directory can give you company information such as the contact details, address and email address among others.

Local Economic Journals and Business Newspapers/Magazines

At times, it’s hard to find information about certain companies online. However, you can get it through some conventional methods such as some business magazines, newspapers or local economic journals.

You can also learn about a company through local or national news, forums, blogs or publications.

Conclusion

Companies update their information regularly so it’s important to keep your database current. You can do that through tools such as websites like Companies House, LinkedIn, AeroLeads, Glassdoor, Reuters, Google News, Corporate Information, directories or business newspapers.

The aim is to gain some insights before pitching, setting up a meeting with the company representatives, investing or accepting employment. Analyzing your target company’s moves by looking at its press release, financial reports or advisories can help you tweak your presentation or plans accordingly.

However, not all of the above-listed sources of information are accurate and reliable. In fact, most of them don’t verify the information they publish on their sites or publications. However, Reuters does because it only publishes verified information and from reliable sources.