New company data for lenders, brokers and fintechs
How can a lender assess a company that is only weeks old? A company formed last month has no accounts, no filing history and no credit file worth the name — the first accounts arrive up to 21 months later. Salenovo scores new companies on day zero from what does exist: formation channel, address type, sector, director history on the register, and then the early trading signals — a verified website, registered premises, an ICO registration, a first filing.
What you get
Signals before accounts
Two-thirds of new companies never trade. Knowing which third is which, on day zero, is the difference between a book of start-up loans that performs and one that does not.
Formation channel
A company formed at a mass-formation address with a 21% historical trading rate is a different proposition from one formed at its own trading premises. We know both.
Verified, dated, sourced
Every signal carries its source and date: the page the website was verified from, the council register the premises came from.
National, by API
For lenders the product is a feed, not a local list: every incorporation, scored, with signals updated at 30, 90 and 180 days.
What one decision is worth
One avoided default on a £25,000 start-up loan is worth more than a year of the national feed; one performing loan written to a company a thin credit file would have declined is the upside. The score separates the two at day zero.
A worked example: Chelmsford
UK last week: 14,543 incorporated, about 5,261 expected to trade, 15% at mass-formation or virtual-office addresses. See the Chelmsford page, see a real week's list, or compare any area.
Against what you do today
| Raw register dump | Companies House by hand | Salenovo | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What arrives | Every incorporation, unscored | Credit-reference file: thin or empty for a new company | Day-zero score plus early trading signals, refreshed |
| Basis | None | Filings that do not exist yet | 447,000 companies with known outcomes; held-out band A traded 60–70% of the time, band E 7–9% |
| Delivery | CSV | Per-company lookup | Weekly file or API |
Business-to-business email to a limited company or LLP is permitted under PECR without prior consent, provided you say who you are and offer an opt-out. Every row says where the address came from. No director names, no home addresses.
Your first week
- The weekly national file delivers every incorporation with its band, entity type, formation channel and address type; a daily feed URL or API can be set up for a founding customer who needs it.
- Join on company number to applications and to your book; the band is a day-zero prior where no filing history exists.
- Use the early signals as they arrive — verified website, registered premises, ICO registration, first filing — at 30, 90 and 180 days.
- Watch the running-accuracy table on the method page: each scored month is reported as its outcomes become known.
- Feed outcomes back if you can; the model is refit as cohorts mature.
Two short messages that work — an email and a letter, with the one line that matters for your trade — are on the templates page.
Questions
How accurate is the day-zero score?
On held-out 2024 companies, band A (the top fifth) traded 60–70% of the time and band E (the bottom fifth) 7–9%, against a base rate of about 35%. The full method and the running accuracy as cohorts mature are published on this site.
What early signals do you track?
A verified website (with the company's registered number found on it where possible), a registered food premises, an ICO data-protection registration, a resolving domain, the formation channel and address type, and register events as they happen.
Method and accuracy — how the numbers are made: incorporations from the Companies House public register, mapped to councils with the ONS Postcode Directory; "expected to trade" from the historical outcomes of 447,000 companies formed in 2022 and 2024, by formation address and sector; websites verified by fetching the company's name-matching domain and checking it against the company; food premises from the Food Standards Agency's register. All Open Government Licence. Every row in the paid list carries its source and date.
Other uses: Accountants & bookkeepers · Insurance brokers · Web, design & marketing agencies · Hospitality & food-service suppliers · Commercial property & serviced offices · B2B suppliers: telecoms, payroll, EPOS, merchant services · Councils, LEPs & business improvement districts · Business owners