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BUSINESSES NEED TO BE PREPARED FOR CHANGES TO COMPANIES HOUSE DATA

Equifax highlights potential impact of changes to Directors details

London - 16th September 2009 - 1st October 2009 sees the final changes to The Companies Act 2006 which received Royal Assent on 8th November 2006, effectively replacing existing company legislation. This includes several significant changes to the data to be held on Company Directors at Companies House. Leading business information expert, Equifax, is advising organisations that deal with businesses to take note of these changes because they could have serious implications for their future financial stability if decision-making and risk management processes are not updated.

"There has been concern in some sectors that the inclusion of Directors residential addresses on Companies House data was an infringement of their privacy" confirmed Nic Beishon, Head of Equifax Commercial Information Solutions. "The new Act has tackled this by creating a new 'service address' entry on Companies House data for every Director. Whilst this is certainly commendable in protecting the privacy of Directors and their families, it will make it harder for organisations to check the background to those people running businesses when considering them for new credit terms, etc.

"At Equifax we feel that businesses need to be very aware of these changes so that they can adapt their checking and monitoring processes to ensure they do not become victim to bad debt or fraud simply because they didn't ask the right questions at the outset."

From 1st October 2009, every Director must provide Companies House with both their usual residential address (URA) and a service address for each directorship they hold. Directors will be able to file a service address for the public record, which can be the same as the URA or somewhere different. The service address will be on the public record and will be public information. However, the URA will be protected and not accessible to those searching company data.

Equifax has altered its products to comply with the conditions and meaning of the Act. This means that wherever Equifax currently provides director address details, after the changes only service address details will be provided. Even if the director has used the same address for the service address and URA, this will not be apparent from the data Equifax provides to its customers. However, Equifax's Blended Service - which combines both business information and personal data on the Directors behind a business - will be unaffected by the Act's provisions. This is because any company using this service will have already obtained the consent to access personal data about the Director, allowing access to information held at the addresses they have supplied.

"For those customers that do not currently have consent to access the personal data of Directors, we are, therefore, strongly advising that they should build this request into their credit application processes going forward". continued Nic Beishon.

"They need to ensure they have residential address details provided as part of the application and that the customer gives them authority to check their personal credit details as well as their business history. This could be quite a change in culture for some organisations so it is well worth thinking about ahead of the changes coming into force on 1st October."

In addition, Equifax will be able to provide the URA to specified public authority customers as well as the service address. Equifax's new Officer URA Report will include these details. But one important area where credit reference agencies will not be able to obtain the URA of a Director is where they are the beneficiary of a valid Confidentiality Order or for security reasons*.

"Equifax continues to provide an impeccable level of data and we feel confident that the final phase of the Companies Act will not impact on this" concluded Nic Beishon. "We have invested in changing all our systems to enable us to take on the new data formats when they become live in October, ensuring our customers enjoy a consistently high service with a minimum of disruption. But we are keen that our customers realise that they also might need to adapt their business practices to ensure they don't fall foul of the changes."

ENDS

*Credit reference agencies will not be able to obtain the usual residential address of any Director who is the beneficiary of a Confidentiality Order on the grounds that they are:

• At serious risk of violence or intimidation as a result of the activities of a company of which they are a Director;
• Or has been employed by the police or security services;
• Providing, or has provided, goods or services to the police or security services

For further press information please contact: Wendy Harrison, Cecile Stearn, Margot Tomkinson or Jenny Staniforth at HSL on 020 8977 9132 / Fax: 020 8977 5200 or Email: wendy@harrisonsadler.com