- [Nicole] Hey everyone. Now we're going to have an introduction to Companies House. So this is like the kind of registration organisation for companies in the UK. It's incredibly useful, all sorts of stuff on there, to company accounts, finding out who the directors are. And yeah, if you're going to profile a company it's really important to utilise this tool. 

So let's get started. I've just googled Companies House and I'm going to click on this link. And what we're looking for is find company information. So, get information about a company, just press start now and then you can search the register. So put in the group you're, or the company you're researching. So I think we're going to look at the Banks Group a bit later in the course. So this is a coal mining company and I'm going to just show you a bit more. So what's going to come up is a big list of potential options of different companies. So that is why it makes it really useful to know what the company number is that you're looking for. So on most company websites they should actually list by law, their registered company number. And you can search by that and that way you know you are looking at the right one. I've definitely looked at the wrong one before. So don't make that mistake. 

So you can see again, a list of companies here that have come up in the search and a list of officers. But yeah, we won't look into that now. Okay, so we're going to go to the Banks Group Limited. I'm just going to give you a little talk through of this page. So you've got your overview here, so you can see your registered office address. And most of the time this is a genuine office address. Sometimes it might be one that someone can kind of rent. Sometimes people might put their home address. It will have company status. So whether it is active or dormant. It will tell you the type of company. So we know this is a private limited company. It will tell you when it was incorporated. So 1988. And it will tell you when the last accounts were made up to. 

So every company has to file their accounts every year which is why they're called annual accounts. And their confirmation statement is just kind of like a confirmation of which directors are still employed and if there's been any kind of significant changes, changes of people with significant control in the company. And this can be useful too. It will say previous company names. So this one has obviously had, I don't know how to pronounce that, Cope Private Limited. So that was the company previous to this one. Okay. So we're going to look at the filing history. Okay, and there's different, you know, there's different options available. 

So let's click on accounts. So here, we're going to see all of the company's accounts through time. So their annual accounts that they've submitted. And if I click view PDF, it's going to, sometimes it's just like an automatic download and sometimes it's going to open in another page. And also it's worth noting that they do kind of keep you under surveillance. Like the data they'll record who's searching for which company, which is another reason to pay attention to the security lesson previously in the course. Okay. So... Here we've got our annual accounts that have been submitted. So yeah, Rich will be talking to you all about how to read these very soon. So that's exciting. 

In the meantime I'm going to continue showing you around Companies House. So yeah, you can see all the kind of historical accounts. Okay, so now we're going to look at people. So I'm going to click people and you can see the officers. And what's very useful is to click current officers and then this will show you some of the different people at the company. So we've got David Joseph Martin as the secretary, we've got Harry Banks who's the old school capitalist who runs this coal mine. This is like quite a family company. So I quite enjoyed researching them. It's not often you kind of get like a very traditional kind of owner, founder, CEO type thing or like family money. Okay, so then we've got another director here. And you can see yeah, these are all the current directors and the kind of... So what we'll do is I'll click on Harry Banks in a minute but it'll show you their correspondence address. Again, sometimes this is an office. Sometimes it's a home address. It will tell you often their occupation whether they're an engineer or an accountant and their country of residents. And it will also, it won't give you their full date of birth but it will tell you the month and year of birth. And then if you click on the actual person, you can see all of the companies that they've either previously had a role as a director in or still have. So what I like to do is just filter, just go to current appointments and we can see that good old Harry Banks is a director in all of these other companies. 

So when you're researching a company it's really useful to take a look at some of the big owners, the big directors, and yeah, see who's listed on Companies House as an actual director and then see if they own, if they have any other companies or any other fingers in any other pies, which is quite useful. So most of these look as if they're kind of other Banks Group properties. Sometimes you'll find a company that's, you know, completely different. And it's very interesting that that person is listed as a director. Okay, so that's looking at the officers. Persons with significant control, that's like a whole other geeky thing but that's basically someone that's got, you know, an ownership of the shares or the voting rights. So yeah. Instead of two individuals they've listed a limited company as the person with significant control. So as this kind of ultimate owner. Charges, let's have a look if there's anything here. So let's have a look at what that says. Registration of a charge. Yeah, it's not very exciting. Let's have a look. Let's see if there's anything interesting. Particulars of a charge. So... Something about a golf club and some sort of... Yeah, I'm not sure. But anyway, you can like look at these, have a play around, see what the, see what they got in trouble for. And you can click more. And yeah, I think these are all services that you need to pay for, for your company's snapshot. Yeah, you have to register with Companies House to do that. Okay, so I think that's a little overview. Yeah, trying to think if there's anything else useful to show you. I don't think there is. 

I think as long as you know how to search for a company, to use the company number if there's lots of companies that are called the same thing. And as long as you know that the filing history is useful you'll see things you need to see here in bold, full accounts. That's what you're looking for when you're downloading something. And just a reminder that when you go to the people section you can see who the current directors are of a company and their role, whether they're a secretary or a director. Often they'll list a chairperson as well. But that's useful to see too. Okay. So yeah, I think there's most likely other kind of how to guides with Companies House and how to use it, but that's the basics.