Seven million people have until November to prove who they are.

A supplier check has always started with the same free source: the Companies House register. Who the directors are, who controls the company, when it was formed, what it filed and when. The weakness was never the data; it was that nobody had ever checked whether the people named on it existed.

That changed on 18 November 2025. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, every director and every person with significant control must now verify their identity with Companies House. The department said in August 2025 that it expects 6 to 7 million individuals to need to do so by mid-November 2026, and that it will be an offence to act as a director without being verified once the duty applies.

What does verification actually involve?

A person proves their identity once, to Companies House, and receives a personal code they use across every company they are connected to. There are two routes: directly, through GOV.UK One Login, or through an authorised corporate service provider — an accountant, solicitor or formation agent registered with Companies House to verify on its behalf. The duty is on the individual, not the company; a company with three directors needs three verifications.

Existing directors were given a twelve-month transition. The trigger is the confirmation statement: when a company files its next one after 18 November 2025, its directors must confirm they have verified. A company whose confirmation date fell in December 2025 was caught early; one whose date falls in October 2026 is caught at the very end. That staggering is why the register is still, in September 2026, a mixture of verified and not-yet-verified people, and why the deadline matters more than the start date.

How far along is it?

Companies House publishes the compliance figures quarterly, in its management information series, and only as spreadsheets — there is no page you can read them on. The release for April to June 2026, published on 30 July 2026, is the latest. We have not opened it ourselves, so the figures below are somebody else's reading of it rather than ours: the accountancy firm PKF Francis Clark reports 55% of directors, 50% of LLP members and 42% of people with significant control verified by the end of June 2026. We have linked both, theirs and the release, and we would rather say that than present a number we have not checked as though we had.

What is certain is the direction: more than 300,000 people had verified voluntarily by early August 2025, more than a million by early November, and the remainder of six to seven million have until mid-November 2026.

What changes for a supplier check?

Three things, in order of usefulness.

First, the register becomes evidence rather than assertion. Until now, a director’s name on the register meant that somebody typed it. After the transition it means a government service matched it to an identity document. A check that used to stop at “the directors are listed” can now ask whether they are verified, which is a different and better question.

Second, non-compliance becomes a signal. A company past its confirmation date whose directors have not verified is a company that either does not know its obligations or cannot meet them. Neither is what you want in a supplier. Companies House has said it will take action against those who fail to verify; the shape of that action will be visible on the register as it happens.

Third, the register will move. Directors who cannot or will not verify will resign, be removed, or be recorded as non-compliant. A supplier whose board changes in the two months either side of November 2026 deserves a second look, and a check run once in the spring will not have seen it. This is the case for watching a public register rather than reading it, which is the whole argument behind our supplier-distress tool and the pipelines we build to keep a register in view.

What this does not do

Verification proves that a person exists and is who they say they are. It does not prove they are honest, solvent, or in control of the company in practice. A verified director can still run a company into the ground, and a person with significant control can still be a nominee for somebody else. The register is better; it is not an audit.

It also does not, on its own, tell you whether a supplier is in trouble. That is still what the Gazette notices, the late filings, the charges and the resignations are for — read together, on a schedule, with the date of every reading written down.

What to do this month

1. If you are a director, verify. The duty is personal, the deadline is November, and the offence is acting without it.
2. Add “verified?” to your supplier check. It is a free field on a free register and it will separate the compliant from the confused by December.
3. Re-run your checks after the deadline. A check from before mid-November 2026 was run against a register that had not yet been tested. The one that matters is the one run after.