- Each Companies House filing points to a different finance need, so start with the product you sell and work back to the filings that come before demand for it.
- New and satisfied charges, director appointments, share allotments, new incorporations and fresh accounts are the most useful triggers; overdue accounts are a weak signal on their own.
- Companies House gives you director names but not contact details, so you need a verified email for the right person and, ideally, a second signal from outside the register.
- Timing matters more than volume: contact businesses while the filing is recent and reference only the public fact, never an inference about their finances.
- Limited companies and LLPs are corporate subscribers under PECR, but you still need an opt-out on every email, a legitimate interests assessment and permanent suppression lists.
Companies House tells you when a business has just borrowed, repaid debt, missed a filing, changed its leadership or raised capital, and each of those events points to a different finance need. To use it well, you pull the filings regularly, map each one to the product it signals, filter out the noise, find the right decision-maker and contact them while the event is still recent.
The register will never tell you a company wants a loan. It gives you dated, public facts. The skill is in reading those facts as prompts for a well-timed conversation, not as proof.
Step 1: Start with your product, not the register
Why: a new charge is a strong signal for one product and a useless one for another. If you start by downloading everything, you end up with a huge list and no reason to email anyone on it.
How: write down each product you broker, lend or sell. Next to each one, write the business event that usually comes just before the need. Then ask which of those events leaves a trace at Companies House.
Example:
- An invoice finance broker wants B2B companies with growing turnover and rising debtors. Trace: filed accounts.
- An asset finance lender wants firms investing in plant and vehicles. Trace: rising fixed assets in accounts, charges over specific assets.
- A bridging and development lender wants new property vehicles. Trace: new incorporations in property sectors, charges over land.
- A payments or FX provider wants businesses that have just raised money or changed finance leadership. Trace: share allotments, new director appointments.
This list becomes your signal map. Everything after this step serves it.
Step 2: Choose how you will pull the data
Why: the right source depends on how many companies you need to watch and how fresh the data has to be.
How: there are five free routes, all from Companies House.
- Advanced search on Find and update company information. Filter by SIC code, location, incorporation date and company status. Best for testing a segment by hand. Companies House explains the filters on its advanced search blog.
- The company data product. A free monthly bulk snapshot of live companies, including SIC codes, status and the dates accounts and confirmation statements are next due. It is compiled to the end of the previous month and published within 5 working days, according to the Companies House data products guidance. Good for spotting overdue filings at scale.
- The accounts data product. Daily and monthly files of accounts in XBRL format. It only covers accounts filed electronically, so expect gaps.
- The public data API. Live, real-time data on charges, officers, filing history and persons with significant control. See the Companies House Developer Hub. This is what you use once a segment proves itself.
- Follow. A free email alert whenever a company you follow files something, described in the GOV.UK guide to searching the register. Useful for a watchlist of named target accounts.
Example: a two-person commercial finance brokerage tests one region and two SIC codes through advanced search for a month. When the replies justify it, they set up a daily API job that pulls new charges and officer appointments for that segment.
Step 3: Map each filing to the finance it signals
Why: this is where most lists go wrong. Treating every filing as the same kind of "intent" produces generic emails.
How: read the filing, not just its type. The detail inside it tells you who, what and when.
New charge registered (MR01)
The company has just given security to a lender. Read the "persons entitled" field for the lender's name and the description for what is secured: a debenture, a fixed charge over property, or specific assets.
A new charge usually means the main facility is done, so do not pitch the same product. Pitch what sits around it. A debenture in favour of an invoice finance provider tells an asset finance broker the business is growing on working capital. A charge over a development site tells a lender the project is under way and exit finance may follow.
Satisfied charge (MR04)
Debt has been repaid or refinanced. The asset may now be unencumbered, or the business may have moved lender. For brokers this is one of the cleaner signals: the company has just been through a funding decision and may still be comparing options, or may have assets free for refinancing.
Newly filed accounts
Look for growing turnover alongside rising debtors (invoice finance), rising fixed assets (asset finance) or a jump in headcount. Micro-entity and abridged accounts contain little detail, so this works best on larger small companies and above.
Overdue accounts or confirmation statement
The weakest signal on its own. It can mean cash strain, but it often means a busy owner or a slow accountant. For most lenders it is a risk flag, not a lead. Use it only alongside something else.
Director appointments and resignations
The officer record shows occupation. A new finance director or CFO often reviews banking, facilities, payments and insurance in their first months. A founder resigning, paired with a new person with significant control, can point to a sale or management buyout.
New incorporations
A brand-new trading startup rarely meets lender criteria. Two kinds of incorporation are more useful: a new holding company above an existing trading business, which suggests a restructure or acquisition, and a new property company, which often borrows to buy or build.
Share allotments and ownership changes
A share allotment (SH01) signals new equity. A change in persons with significant control signals new owners. Freshly funded companies are good prospects for payments, treasury and growth debt. A change of control can lead to refinancing acquisition debt.
Step 4: Filter out the noise
Why: a raw Companies House pull is mostly companies you should never email.
How: apply your lending or panel criteria before you spend time on anyone.
- Remove dissolved companies and those in liquidation or administration, unless restructuring is your market.
- Remove dormant companies and micro-entities if your products need trading history and turnover.
- Remove SIC codes your lenders will not touch.
- Remove charges in favour of your own clients or panel lenders.
- Check the business is still trading: a working website, recent activity, a real office.
Example: an asset finance broker pulls new charges over vehicles and machinery, then drops anything from lenders already on their panel and any company filing micro-entity accounts. The list shrinks sharply, and every name left is worth a researched email.
Step 5: Enrich with a contact and a second signal
Why: Companies House gives you directors' names and a registered office, which is often an accountant's address. It does not give you an email or tell you who handles finance.
How: for each company, find the person who owns the decision (managing director in smaller firms, finance director in larger ones), find their work email and verify it before sending. Then look outside the register for a second signal. Rept tracks ten: sales hiring, job-posting surges, funding rounds, Companies House charges, filed accounts, new paid advertising, leadership hires, market expansion, tech-stack changes and industry news. A satisfied charge plus a hiring surge is a much stronger reason to write than either alone.
Affordable contact discovery is mostly a time cost, not a data cost. The register is free, and verification is cheap. The expensive part is the research per company, which is why most firms either build a process or hand it to someone. We cover the trade-offs in data enrichment for financial services cold email.
Step 6: Time outreach on each trigger
Why: a filing is a dated event. Its value falls as other brokers and lenders read the same register.
How: set a timing rule per signal.
- Satisfied charge: contact promptly, while the funding decision is fresh.
- New charge: contact soon for complementary products, and diarise a follow-up for when the facility is likely to come up for review.
- New finance director: in their first weeks, before reviews are finished.
- Share allotment or change of control: promptly, while plans are being made.
- New accounts: within days of filing, before the numbers feel old.
- Overdue filing: low priority, and only with a second signal.
Step 7: Write from the filing, and stay compliant
Why: a researched first line earns a reply. A presumptuous one gets you reported.
How: mention only the public fact, never your inference about their finances. Do not write "I can see cash is tight". Keep it short, ask one question, and include an opt-out. Do not include rates, approval speeds or anything that reads as a financial promotion.
Example:
Subject: Your new facility with [lender]
Hi Sarah, I saw [Company] registered a charge with [lender] last week. Once the main facility is in place, the question is usually how the rest of the funding fits around it. We help [sector] firms compare [product] across a panel of lenders. Worth a short call at some point? If not, reply "no" and I will not contact you again.
On the legal side, limited companies and LLPs are corporate subscribers under PECR, but you still need an opt-out on every email, a legitimate interests assessment on file and permanent suppression lists. Under the Data (Use and Access) Act the ICO can fine PECR breaches up to £17.5 million or 4% of global turnover, whichever is higher. The previous maximum was £500,000. Our guide to whether B2B cold email is legal under PECR and GDPR covers the detail.
Deliverability matters too. Since February 2024 Google requires anyone sending 5,000+ emails a day to Gmail to have SPF, DKIM and DMARC, one-click unsubscribe and a spam complaint rate under 0.3%. Microsoft introduced the same requirements for Outlook in May 2025. Send from separate, warmed-up domains so your main domain is protected.
Step 8: Measure by signal and cut what does not work
Why: some triggers will produce conversations for your product and some will not. You only find out by tracking them separately.
How: tag every prospect with the signal that triggered the email. Track positive replies and qualified opportunities per signal, not just per campaign. Drop signals that consistently underperform and put the effort into the ones that work.
Results vary widely by sector. Across Rept's 150+ financial services clients the average positive reply rate is 29.4%, with the best by sector at 60% for payment gateways and 50% for wealth. Your own numbers by signal are the ones that matter.
Common mistakes
- Treating a filing as proof of need. A new charge means they borrowed, not that they want to borrow again.
- Pitching the product they just bought. Lead with what sits around the new facility.
- Leaning on overdue accounts. On their own they mostly find admin backlogs and poor credit risks.
- Emailing the registered office. It is often the accountant. Find the actual decision-maker.
- Waiting too long. A charge from two months ago has already been seen by your competitors.
- Writing about their finances. Reference the public event, not your guess about cash flow.
- Skipping suppression. Anyone who opts out must never be contacted again, across every campaign.
- Sending from your main domain. One bad campaign can damage the domain your clients and lenders rely on.
Rept runs this as a managed service for UK financial services firms: we map the target market, research every company for signals including Companies House charges and filed accounts, write each email from that research, send from separate warmed-up domains and hand interested replies to you.