Congratulations, You’re a Director. Now Prove You Exist.

Somewhere in the UK right now, a company director is sitting in front of their laptop, holding their passport up to a webcam, tilting their head like they’re auditioning for a very low-budget spy film. This is not a scam. This is not a phishing email pretending to be your bank. This is Companies House identity verification, and as of this year, it’s the law — which means if you’re a director or a person with significant control (PSC) of a UK company, you’re going to have your own moment of talking to a webcam like it owes you money.

Here’s what it actually is, why it exists, and what happens if you ignore the email about it (spoiler: nothing good).

Wait, why does Companies House suddenly care who I am?

For most of its history, Companies House worked a bit like a very trusting guestbook. You could register a company, name yourself as director, and nobody actually checked whether “you” existed in the way you claimed. This turned out to be a problem, because it also meant a small but persistent number of people were registering companies under fake names, stolen identities, or invented directors entirely — sometimes for genuinely serious fraud, laundering money through UK shell companies that looked official on paper and were, in reality, nobody at all.

The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 was Parliament’s response: if you want your name on the UK’s public company register, you now have to prove you’re an actual human being who actually exists. Companies House identity verification became mandatory from 18 November 2025, and it applies to directors, PSCs, and anyone filing on a company’s behalf.

Who actually has to do this

• Every director of a UK limited company, regardless of how long they’ve held the role
• Every Person with Significant Control (PSC) — broadly, anyone owning more than 25% of a company’s shares or voting rights
• Anyone forming a new company or being newly appointed as a director — for these people, verification happens before the appointment even goes through
• Agents and accountants filing on a company’s behalf, who will themselves need to be registered as an Authorised Corporate Service Provider (ACSP) as this rolls out further

The deadline, without the small print headache

The 18 November 2025 date wasn’t a single deadline for everyone — it was the start of a 12-month transition period, ending 18 November 2026. Your actual personal deadline depends on your situation:

1. New directors and new companies: verification is required immediately, before the appointment or incorporation is even processed. No verification, no company.
2. Existing directors: you need to provide your personal code by your company’s next confirmation statement — the annual filing every UK company already has to do.
3. PSCs who aren’t directors: you get a 14-day window tied to your birth month, or the date you became a PSC, whichever applies.

If you’re a director of several companies, you only verify once — the resulting personal code follows you for life, across every directorship you hold, present and future. Think of it as a permanent backstage pass, except the show is UK corporate compliance.

What happens if you just… don’t

This is the part that tends to get people’s attention. If a director hasn’t verified by the time their company’s confirmation statement is due, the company simply cannot file it. Not “filed late with a fine” — cannot file at all. Since confirmation statements are a legal requirement for every UK company, that’s a genuinely serious problem, and it cascades: unverified directors can’t be appointed to new roles, can’t register new companies, and after the transition period ends, Companies House will add a public note to the register flagging non-compliance for anyone still holding out. There’s also the possibility of an unlimited fine for acting as a director without verification, which is Parliament’s way of saying “we are not joking about this.”

None of this is designed to catch out a busy director who genuinely forgot. It’s aimed squarely at the people the whole system exists to stop — the ones who were hoping nobody would ever check. If this is the kind of thing that makes you want a second opinion on your wider governance and compliance set-up, our CFO Services team works with directors on exactly that, beyond just the paperwork.

How to actually do it

Verification takes a few minutes for most people and works through one of two routes: GOV.UK One Login directly, using a passport, driving licence, or biometric residence permit and a smartphone selfie, or through an Authorised Corporate Service Provider — typically your accountant, if they’re registered to offer this. If you already work with an accountant for your confirmation statement, this is a five-minute conversation worth having sooner rather than later, especially with more agents needing their own ACSP registration as the rules tighten further into late 2026.

What UK directors should actually do about it

• Check your company’s next confirmation statement date now, and work backwards from it — that’s your real, personal deadline, not the headline November 2026 date.
• Verify early rather than at the last minute. If any director on a multi-director company hasn’t verified when the statement is due, the whole filing gets blocked — not just their part of it.
• Ask your accountant whether they’re ACSP-registered. If they’re not, and they normally file on your behalf, that’s a conversation to have before it becomes a filing emergency. Our Taxation & Compliance team can confirm your position and handle this alongside your existing filings.
• Map out every directorship you hold, if you’re a director of more than one company. Your real deadline is the earliest confirmation statement date across all of them, not the latest — our Business Intelligence team can help you build a simple tracker across entities so nothing slips through.
• Don’t let this become one more thing sitting in a to-do list, alongside all your other accounting and bookkeeping, payroll, and invoicing admin. It takes minutes to complete and considerably longer to fix once a filing has already been blocked.

Companies House identity verification is, underneath the webcam-selfie novelty, a fairly reasonable idea: if your name is going to sit on a public register that people rely on to check who they’re doing business with, it’s not unreasonable to prove that name belongs to an actual person. For directors who are already organised, this is a five-minute task. For everyone else, it’s the kind of five-minute task that has a habit of becoming a genuine filing crisis if left until the week the confirmation statement is due. See how we’ve helped other UK businesses stay ahead of Companies House and HMRC compliance in our client case studies, hear directly from clients on our testimonials page, or browse the blog for more on this year’s other regulatory changes. You can also read more about who we are and how we work on our Our Story page. Still have questions? Our FAQ page covers the common ones, or you’re welcome to get in touch directly.

Brit Balance keeps UK businesses compliant with Companies House and HMRC changes as they land — identity verification included. Visit our Taxation & Compliance service, explore our full range of services, check out our current bookkeeping offer, or book a consultation to get your directors verified without the last-minute scramble.