Fraud is like a moving target that’s hard to nail. And when a company becomes the victim of fraud, there are unfortunately no quick fixes.

But we are expanding our e-services by expanding the type of accounts we can accept electronically, and have also developed additional security for administrative documents for public companies.

Our work is based on the added security and the speed we can provide with electronic services. It is also based on a co-operative approach to helping companies protect themselves against attempts to commit fraud.

About 80% of Companies House documents can be filed electronically, and false filing is an area that illustrates clearly the benefits of doing this.
Put in context, the incidence of false filing may not seem high. Out of 600,000 documents filed each month, about 50 may be linked to fraud. While that might not seem like a massive figure, the reality is that an individual instance of fraud can have a devastating effect on a company. Fraud is an issue that needs to be taken seriously.

The key issue for Companies House is that we operate within a statutory framework that requires us to accept documents in good faith, and to register them and make them available to the public.

We operate on the basis of recovering the cost of each service we provide individually. Checking the bona fides of every document we receive would be expensive and would add to the already great regulatory burden on business.
We have to look elsewhere for solutions and work closely with others in government and business. We have established a police liaison officer role at Companies House and have developed a three-point plan that helps companies to protect themselves against fraud.

1. Electronic filing: Companies filing electronically benefit from the security that allows us to identify the source of electronically filed information.

2. PROOF (Protected Online Filing): Companies instruct us to accept only documents submitted electronically. We query any paper documents that are submitted.

3. Monitor: This service notifies a company each time a document is filed on its record. The company can take action in cases of false filings.
To combat fraud successfully, we need companies to take advantage of the measures we are introducing.

Tim Moss is director of corporate strategy at Companies House