What do I do about this email from Companies House?
Why do Companies House need to check my passport?
Until now it has been extremely easy to register a company with Companies House with very little in the way of verifying who is setting up the company and where they are based. There have been issues with many companies being set up at the homes of people that are unaware that this was happening, trading fraudulently then moving on. until now Companies House have been powerless to prevent these sorts of things from happening.
Therefore the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 has been put in place to deliver additional powers to Companies House so that they can more easily control who is registering companies in the first place and ensure that they can deal with any issues and remove any companies that are operating illegally.
Existing directors will have noticed the significant increase in Companies House fees and changes to the annual confirmation statements that came in last year but Companies House is soon to introduce a further series of measures.
The first of these is to biometrically check the identity of every director and Person of Significant Control held by Companies House. This is due to become mandatory in the Autumn, however they are starting to contact directors now so you may receive an email from them asking you to set up an account with them and download an app that will scan your passport or photo driving licence and match it to your face through taking a selfie!
Its worth noting that if you are eligible for a passport or driving licence with biometric tags but you haven't applied until now, you will need to apply for this exercise. For example, if you are eligible for a photo driving licence but still only have a paper version you may find that you need to obtain your new ID before you can confirm your ID.
Instead of using the Companies House app to scan your ID, you may be able to ask your accountant or solicitor to do this for you. However, they must be approved by Companies House to perform ID checks and it is highly likely that they will need to use a very similar app to run the process. As usual, they will charge a fee as well.
If you aren't able to use the app you will need to get your ID verified using an Authorised Corporate Service Provider who is permitted to perform a manual check of you identification. However, if they wish to offer this as a service, Companies House require the individual ACSPs to attend rigorous training in detecting fake ID and its unlikely that your local accountant will be sufficiently qualified to do this!
This is a very new process so there may be teething troubles along the way. However, I have been through the ID check routine for my own business and once I set up the new Companies House account, it was fairly straightforward to run through the ID check process.
