# 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](/articles/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](/products/).

## 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](/guides/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](/guides/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](/articles/how-lenders-assess-affordability/).

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](/guides/building-business-creditworthiness/) — the wider habits that lift a file
- [Understanding business credit scores](/articles/understanding-business-credit-scores/) — company score versus personal score
- [Open Banking for business finance](/guides/open-banking-for-business-finance/) — what read-only access does and does not read
- [Borrowing as a new company](/guides/borrowing-as-a-new-company/) — when the file is thin
- [How a lender assesses affordability](/articles/how-lenders-assess-affordability/) — where the file fits the decision
- [Glossary](/glossary/) — definitions of the terms used here

[See what Credicorp offers at credicorp.co.uk →](https://credicorp.co.uk/what-we-offer/)