Creditsafe

Creditsafe is the world’s most used provider of online business credit reports. They have worked hard to change the way business information is used worldwide.

Creditsafe states their data is the largest wholly owned database in the industry, providing accurate and reliable data to over 200,000 subscribers across the globe. They gather data from local, trusted partners and combine it with a scoring algorithm.

You can read more about their data/methodology on their website.

Data

Creditsafe provide The Data City with a wide range of data assets which includes the likes of company financials, operating addresses, shareholders, persons with significant control and more.

Creditsafe are particularly valuable in digitising and simplifying manually submitted financial documents to Companies House (likely a PDF). Although the percentage of companies submitting digital accounts is increasing, in 2024, ~9% of all annual accounts are still not submitted in a digitally readable format. These are often the largest companies (which have the greatest impact on analysis).

We have combined our data with Creditsafe's to build a more complete view of each sector. Our RTICs provide a comprehensive and accurate picture of the economy, going beyond the limitations of traditional systems such as SIC codes.

RTICs combined with digitised Companies House information is a rich dataset which can be used for economic analysis.

Matching

Our data stems from Companies House. Creditsafe process documentation submitted to Companies House thus no matching is required between Creditsafe's and The Data City's data. We use Creditsafe for their digitisation of assets which power many data points on the platform and our downloads. This has allowed us to develop a paid, yet fully reproducible and downloadable economic analysis platform.

We incorporate financial data from Creditsafe for further analysis. Our unique platform stands out by offering company-level data access, setting it apart from the IDBR and ONS datasets, which are not publicly accessible.

Timeseries

Financial data spans the past six years. 

Yearly data

A given company files their annual financial accounts with a “made-up-to date”. We receive this data from Creditsafe.

We take the day of the year it was filed and represent it as a number between 1 and 365. We check whether this number falls in the first half of the year or the second half.

If the “made up to date”  is in the first half of the year, the code assigns the previous year to their financials.

If the “made up to date”  is in the second half of the year, the code assigns the current year to their financials.

We do this to answer this question: “for which year, does financial performance largely cover this one or last?”

In our platform, we apply this method to simplify calculations within analyse based on years. We also do it to simplify multiple filings for a given company within a single year.

Why we believe Creditsafe is the best at what they do

Although Companies House provides publicly available financial filings for all UK companies, many organisations still rely on credit reference agencies because of the way they handle and enhance that data. We believe Creditsafe is the best at this.

Creditsafe takes the raw underlying Companies House information and combines it with additional sources to create a more accurate and timely view of a company’s financial position. They bring in data from CCJs, insolvency notices, and other sources, and then cross-check and validate it to correct inconsistencies or errors in the official filings. Most of this can be automated, but there is still some human involvement required. This enrichment process gives users access to cleaner, more comprehensive data.

While Companies House provides separate filings year by year, credit agencies structure that information into consistent historical datasets, allowing for better trend analysis and comparison across companies and sectors. They also standardise formats across different types of accounts, enabling meaningful comparison between businesses that file full, abridged, or micro accounts. This is particularly important.

Based on the Companies House management information: in 2024-25 92.07% of companies filed their accounts digitally. There is a lack of standardisation in field names in these digital accounts. Creditsafe handles this expertly. Of the remaining ~8% that do not file their accounts digitally, the significant majority are large companies which make up most of the economic outlook of any given sector.

In essence, Companies House is the original source of corporate filings, but credit reference agencies (Creditsafe) transform that raw information into a more complete and reliable dataset rather than relying solely on what has been formally submitted to the registry.