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Company credit files and the bureaux.
Your company has a credit file of its own, separate from any director's personal file. This guide explains how a company file works, which UK business bureaux hold one, what feeds it, and the practical steps a director can take to make it stronger.
A company has a file of its own
The company is a separate legal person, and it builds a separate credit history.
When a company is incorporated it becomes a separate legal person. It can hold a bank account, owe money, and build a record of how it pays what it owes. That record is the company credit file, and it belongs to the company — not to its directors as individuals. A director may have a strong personal credit history and a brand-new company with almost no file at all, or the reverse. The two are assessed separately.
A company file matters because suppliers, lenders and insurers use it to decide whether to extend credit, what terms to offer, and how much to advance. A company that pays on time and files its accounts promptly tends to be offered better trade terms and a wider choice of finance. The difference between a company score and a personal one is set out further in the operator's note, understanding business credit scores.
The UK business bureaux
Several bureaux hold a file on your company, and each scores it on its own model. The same company can carry different scores at each.
| Bureau | What it is |
|---|---|
| Experian Business | A major UK business bureau holding company files and producing a commercial delinquency score and credit limit guidance. |
| Creditsafe | A widely used business credit-checking service producing company scores and recommended credit limits across UK companies. |
| Equifax Business | The commercial arm of Equifax, holding company data and producing business risk scores. |
Because each bureau runs its own model on its own data, a company can show a different score at each one. There is no single "official" company score in the way people imagine. A lender assessing your company may pull data from one or more of these bureaux as one input among several — Credicorp screens applicants against business bureaux rather than running a personal credit check on the director, as set out on the products page.
What feeds the file
A company file is built from public records and from the way the company pays its bills.
- Companies House data. Incorporation date, registered office, directors, the accounts and confirmation statements the company files, and whether those are filed on time or late.
- Payment performance. How promptly the company settles its suppliers and trade creditors. Some suppliers and lenders report payment data to the bureaux, building a picture of the company as a payer.
- Public adverse records. County court judgments against the company, plus any insolvency events such as a winding-up petition.
- Credit applications and existing facilities. Some footprint of credit the company already holds or has recently applied for.
- Financial accounts. Where filed, figures from the company's accounts feed into the risk models the bureaux run.
Notice what is not in that list: a director's personal borrowing, their personal credit cards, or their household finances. A company file is about the company. The exception is a very young or very small company with little of its own history, where a lender may look more closely at the director's track record — covered in borrowing as a new company.
How to improve it
A company file responds to discipline. Most of what strengthens it is within a director's control.
- File on time, every time. Late accounts and confirmation statements at Companies House are visible and read as a warning sign. Filing promptly is the single clearest signal of a well-run company.
- Pay suppliers to terms. Settling trade invoices on or before the due date builds a record of reliability. Persistent late payment, where reported, drags a score down.
- Keep the public record clean. Deal with disputes before they become a county court judgment. A registered CCJ sits on the file for years.
- Keep details current. A correct registered office, accurate director details and an up-to-date SIC code reduce the friction in any check run against the company.
- Check your own file. Companies can review the data the bureaux hold and ask for genuine errors to be corrected. An out-of-date adverse marker should not be left to depress the score.
- Build a trade-credit history deliberately. A company with no history is harder to assess than one that has borrowed modestly and repaid cleanly.
These steps overlap with the wider habits in building business creditworthiness. Improvement is gradual: a file rewards months of consistent behaviour rather than a single action.
What it means when your company borrows
A company file is one input into a lending decision, not the whole of it. Credicorp screens applicants against the business bureaux — Experian Business, Creditsafe and Equifax Business — but the decision rests first on affordability, evidenced by the last six months of business bank statements shared by read-only Open Banking or uploaded as PDFs. There is no personal credit check on the director. How that assessment is reached is described in how a lender assesses whether a company can afford to repay.
Because the company is the borrower, a clean company file works in the company's favour and a thin one is not necessarily fatal — a younger company with a solid, demonstrable cash position can still be affordable. The borrower is always the body corporate, never the director, and never a personal credit profile.
Where to go next
- Building business creditworthiness — the wider habits that lift a file
- Understanding business credit scores — company score versus personal score
- Open Banking for business finance — what read-only access does and does not read
- Borrowing as a new company — when the file is thin
- How a lender assesses affordability — where the file fits the decision
- Glossary — definitions of the terms used here