Companies House identity verification for directors and PSCs

Every UK director and person with significant control now has to prove who they are before Companies House will let their filings through. This is the practical effect of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, and it is the biggest change to company law in over a century. If you are a director, a shareholder who controls more than a quarter of a company, or a founder about to incorporate, identity verification has moved from a nice-to-have to a hard legal precondition. This guide explains who is caught, what the 2026 deadline actually means for your company, and how to avoid the filing blocks that catch out directors who leave it too late.

What Companies House identity verification is

Identity verification, often shortened to IDV, is a one-off check that links a real, named individual to the roles they hold on the register. Under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, Companies House gained the power to insist that the people behind a company are genuinely who they claim to be, closing a gap that for decades allowed fictitious appointments and opaque ownership to slip through. Once you pass the check, you receive a unique 11-character personal code. That code is yours, not the company's, and it follows you across every directorship you hold.

The point that trips people up is that verification is personal and permanent, while the filings that depend on it are recurring. You verify once, but you then quote your personal code whenever you incorporate, take up a new appointment, or file a confirmation statement. Without a verified identity and a personal code, you cannot file, and an unverified director quietly blocks the company's routine filings until the problem is fixed. A verified status also carries weight beyond Companies House, because the GOV.UK One Login route now connects to a wide range of other government services.

The legal framework and the November 2026 deadline

The reforms sit within the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which handed Companies House a more active role in tackling economic crime rather than acting as a passive filing cabinet. Voluntary verification opened on 8 April 2025, and the requirement became mandatory on 18 November 2025. From that date, anyone incorporating a new company or being appointed as a director, LLP member or PSC must verify first. There is no personal code, and no valid appointment, until they do.

Existing directors and PSCs, meaning those in post before 18 November 2025, sit within a twelve-month transition. The trigger for them is the company's next confirmation statement falling due after that date, and the transition closes on 18 November 2026 as the absolute backstop. In practice most companies hit the confirmation statement trigger well before the backstop, so the real deadline for many directors is earlier than the headline date suggests. New PSCs notified after 18 November 2025 have a short window, generally 14 days, to provide their code. Do not assume you have until November 2026; check your confirmation statement due date, because that is very often the earlier and binding deadline. One further point matters for group structures: verification of corporate directors, corporate members of LLPs and third-party agents who file on a company's behalf is being introduced on separate, later timelines and is not yet in force, so those categories should be treated as forthcoming rather than current obligations. The definitive reference is the Companies House guidance on verifying your identity, which is updated as each phase commences.

Who has to verify, and what counts as a PSC

Three groups of individuals are in scope. Directors are the obvious first category. The second is people with significant control, and this is where owners sometimes assume the rules do not reach them. A PSC is, broadly, anyone who holds more than 25% of a company's shares or voting rights, who can appoint or remove a majority of the board, or who otherwise exercises significant influence or control. A sole director-shareholder is therefore almost always both a director and a PSC, and still only needs to verify once. The third group is designated LLP members, who carry responsibilities equivalent to those of company directors.

The distinction that matters commercially is between the individual and the entity. Verification currently applies to individuals, so a human director or a human PSC must verify, while corporate directors and corporate PSCs fall into the later phase mentioned above. If you hold directorships across several companies, you verify a single time and reuse the same personal code for each appointment. That is a genuine efficiency, but it also means your deadline is the earliest confirmation statement date across your whole portfolio of companies, not the latest. Founders planning their ownership split should map who will be a PSC before they file the statement of capital, because the shareholding structure decides who is caught.

How verification works in practice

There are two routes, and the choice usually comes down to your documents and how much you want to hand off. The first is direct verification through GOV.UK One Login, which is free. You use the app with a biometric passport, or answer security questions, or complete the online steps and finish at a Post Office. A UK passport through the app is the smoothest path and most people complete it in well under half an hour, with the result arriving by email, typically within a day. The second route is an Authorised Corporate Service Provider, an ACSP, meaning an accountant, solicitor or formation agent supervised for anti-money laundering purposes who runs the check to the same standard and submits it on your behalf for a fee. ACSPs can accept a wider range of documents, which suits overseas directors or anyone whose ID does not sit neatly within the online service.

Whichever route you take, the output is the same personal code, and it is worth saving that code to a Companies House account so you can retrieve it later. In practice, the friction is rarely the check itself; it is coordination. In a company with several directors and PSCs, everyone needs a code before the next confirmation statement, and a single unverified individual can stall the filing. When you incorporate through the IN01 registration form, verification of every proposed officer has to be in place first, so it belongs at the start of the process, not the end.

Getting your incorporation and governance documents ready

Verification does not stand alone; it slots into the paperwork you already file. At incorporation, the practical sequence is to settle your governance documents and your people at the same time, so that the individuals named in the filing are verified and coded before submission. The founding documents you prepare on Captain.Legal give you a clean base to work from: the articles of association set the internal rulebook, while the memorandum of association records the subscribers who agree to form the company. Getting these right in editable Word and clean PDF means the directors and PSCs named in them line up exactly with the individuals you then verify.

The same discipline helps beyond formation. Where ownership and control are shared, a shareholders' agreement makes clear who holds what, which in turn tells you who crosses the 25% PSC threshold and therefore has to verify. If you are running as a sole trader now but considering incorporating, preparing the sole trader registration pack first lets you keep trading cleanly while you plan the switch, at which point verification becomes part of the incorporation step. The aim throughout is that the names on your documents, the people who control the company, and the verified identities on the register all match.

Common mistakes that block your filings

The most frequent error is treating 18 November 2026 as the date to aim for. For most existing directors the binding deadline is the company's next confirmation statement, which often falls months earlier, and missing it means the statement cannot be filed. Failing to file a confirmation statement is itself an offence, so a verification delay quietly turns into a filing default. The second mistake is verifying the directors but forgetting the PSCs, especially in family or founder-owned companies where a spouse or co-founder controls more than a quarter of the shares without being on the board.

A third recurring problem is leaving verification to the last week, then discovering the app cannot match a non-biometric or expired document, with no time to switch to the Post Office or an ACSP route. A fourth is losing the personal code, or not linking it to a Companies House account, so it has to be recovered under time pressure at filing. Finally, groups often assume corporate directors are already caught and panic, or assume individuals in the group are exempt and do nothing. The current rules bite on individuals; corporate officers come later, so verify every human director and PSC now and keep the group entities under review as those phases commence.

Frequently asked questions