How CompanyIQ Works
From company number to scored intelligence report. Most analyses complete in 60 to 90 seconds.
The Analysis Pipeline
Company and Director Data
We retrieve the company profile, registration details, SIC sector codes, and full director and officer history directly from Companies House, the UK government's official company register.
Filing History
We retrieve the company's filing history. Late filings are identified against statutory deadlines. The most recent accounts filing is always extracted. Where document size permits, the prior year filing is also extracted to support year-on-year trend analysis.
Analysis
The filed accounts are read in full, alongside the company profile, director records and filing history. CompanyIQ applies the CIQ scoring methodology, extracts the financial metrics, identifies risk and growth signals, and writes the narrative summary. Every finding cites the specific section of the accounts that supports it.
Your Report
The completed report is saved to your dashboard. You receive a CIQ Score with full breakdown, executive summary, key insights, financial overview, growth signals, risk signals, and director analysis.
The CIQ Score
The CIQ Score rates any UK company from 0-100 across five dimensions. Each dimension uses a defined formula applied consistently, with no subjective judgement.
Financial Health
The largest dimension, covering revenue growth, profitability, liquidity, and debt levels. Figures are extracted directly from the filed accounts. Where data is unavailable, a neutral score is applied.
Filing Compliance
Based on the company's history of filing on time with Companies House. Late or overdue filings reduce the score. A clean filing history scores the maximum.
Director Quality
Assesses average director tenure, board turnover in the last five years, and any governance flags. Where available, each director's full appointment history across all UK companies is included, highlighting links to dissolved or insolvent entities. Stable boards with experienced directors score higher.
Market Position
Considers the company's age, headcount trend, and sector strength. Established companies in stable or growing sectors score higher.
Risk Assessment
Starts at 10 points. Each identified risk signal deducts from the score based on severity: critical risks deduct 4 points, high risks 3 points, medium risks 2 points, low risks 1 point. The lowest possible score is 0. Only risks with direct documentary evidence are included.
Score Grades
Excellent
80-100
Good
65-79
Fair
50-64
Poor
35-49
Critical
Below 35
Other Report Outcomes
Some companies do not receive a full CIQ Score because of their status on Companies House. In these cases the report explains what was found, and no credit is charged.
Newly Incorporated
No accounts filed yet
Accounts Overdue
Filing deadline passed
Strike-Off Pending
Proposed for removal
Dissolved
No longer active
Companies with very large filed accounts receive a Governance and Compliance Report. This covers filing compliance and director quality, but cannot extract full financial metrics. It is clearly labelled in the report.
The Five Warning Signs
Alongside the CIQ Score, every full report shows a count of five warning signs. These are simple yes or no checks on the filed accounts. They exist because our research found that failure is rarely about one bad number.
Owes more than it owns
Total liabilities exceed total assets. If the company sold everything it has, it still could not pay everyone it owes. The accounts call this negative net assets.
Can't cover the year's bills
The money due to go out over the next year is more than the money the company has or is owed. The accounts call this a current ratio below 1.
Very thin safety margin
Liabilities are more than 90% of everything the company owns, leaving the owners' stake at less than a tenth of the business.
Pattern of late filing
Two or more sets of accounts filed late, or accounts currently overdue. A single late filing is common and usually means nothing. A repeated pattern is worth noting, especially alongside money problems.
Multiple serious risk signals
The analysis found two or more high or critical severity risk signals in the filed accounts, each backed by direct evidence from the document.
Why these five?
We analysed 100+ UK companies that entered insolvency, each corporate insolvency notice published in The Gazette, scoring the last accounts each filed while still trading. 74% were showing two or more of these warning signs at once and among trading companies we have analysed, only 20% look like that. Read the full study: can you predict company failure from filed accounts.
One warning sign on its own is common, around a third of healthy trading companies show at least one. These checks are reasons to look closer, not verdicts. They work alongside the CIQ Score and the full report, not instead of them.
What We Don't Do
We don't access private financial data
We don't perform credit checks or produce credit scores
We don't contact the company being analysed
We don't make investment or lending recommendations
We analyse only publicly available information from Companies House and provide intelligence to support your own decision-making.
Limitations
AI data extraction
Financial figures such as revenue, profit and employee numbers are extracted from filed accounts by AI. In some cases these cannot be located, particularly in non-standard formats or older filings. Where figures cannot be extracted they are shown as "Not disclosed" in the report.
Large companies
Companies with very large filed accounts receive a Governance and Compliance Report rather than a full CIQ Score. This covers filing compliance and director quality but cannot extract full financial metrics. It is clearly labelled in the report.
Micro-entities
Companies filing under FRS 105 provide minimal financial disclosure. The analysis will flag this and reflect the limited data available.
Recently incorporated companies
A lack of historical filings means trend analysis is limited. The report will note this.
Filing lag
Companies House accounts are filed up to 9 months after the period end date. The analysis reflects the most recently filed data, which may not be the current financial year.