Extent of UK Director fraud could be greater than previously thought
New data suggests that as many as 33,675 companies could have fraudulent directors who are unable to prove their identity.
Analysis of Companies House filings by Shareflo suggests the scale of director fraud in the UK may be materially greater than previously understood. The research examines how companies have responded to new Companies House identity-verification requirements and identifies a sharp rise in the number of companies going over one month overdue with their annual filings. The paper identifies 33,675 such private companies where at least one of the directors appears not to have completed ID verification, and presents evidence suggesting that many of these cases are because the director is unable to do so.
Mandatory identity verification was introduced in November 2025. UK companies cannot submit their annual confirmation statement until every director has verified their identity and provided a personal code. Looking across more than 3 million active, non-dormant private companies, the research found that overdue confirmation statements rose sharply in the first year of the regime, particularly for companies between one and twelve months late.
The analysis identified 52,397 companies that were materially overdue on 1 September 2026, had not been similarly late a year earlier, and had at least one natural-person director. By 19 September, 13,401 had resolved their overdue filing. Of the 38,996 that remained overdue, only 5,321 had evidence that every director had verified their identity elsewhere. The remaining 33,675 companies had at least one director with no such evidence.
The pattern is especially striking because the increase is concentrated in the period where identity verification should be binding. Short delays, which may reflect ordinary administrative friction, increased only modestly; long-standing late filings changed little. By contrast, the number of companies one to twelve months late rose by 138.5% in a year.
The companies in the unresolved group are disproportionately concentrated in sectors including accommodation and food services, transport and storage, wholesale and retail, and construction - sectors where fraud tends to be most common. They are also more likely to be registered in urban postcodes with high levels of deprivation. The research does not establish that any individual company is fraudulent, but it concludes that the evidence is consistent with a substantial number of companies being unable to file because the people named as their directors cannot prove who they are.