Companies House contains all the information you need to build a decent risk profile. However, this excellent resource has a major limitation...
Reports are saved as scanned images, and the only way to search through them is manually. Who has the time to wade through thousands of company reports?
We created our innovative SearCHeD tool to simplify the process and give you back valuable time. It turns annual reports from Companies House into searchable documents, allowing you to flag potential risks in a fraction of the time.
Let’s look at how our SearCHeD tool works, and how it’s changing the game in financial risk management.
Risk hiding in plain sight
While financial failure is always a threat for any risk analyst to consider, extra vigilance is vital.
Insolvencies were up by 18% in October compared with last year, reaching 2,315. A company's financial information may look fine on the surface, but the words and phrases in their reports may tell a different story. Companies House holds a company’s annual and interim reports. This allows you to pick up signs of distress throughout the year, and not just in the end-of-year financials.
Most of the vast database of Companies House is scanned and uploaded as image files. This means you can’t use a search function on a computer to quickly find the information you need. Trawling through these reports manually is such a laborious task that risk indicators often go unnoticed.
We know that this is an issue companies have struggled with for years, so we created our intelligent Companies House search engine.
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Finding useful information in unstructured data
SearCHeD allows you to assess risk through a different lens of analysis. This innovative tool takes hundreds of thousands of image files from Companies House and turns them into searchable documents.
This is a game-changer for financial risk management. It allows you to search company reports in seconds, uncovering the red flags that might have slipped under the radar. You can conduct searches based on broad or narrow criteria, including searching for:
- Keywords that indicate risk, like ‘fraud’ or ‘covenant breach’
- Specific companies by name
- By industry
- Risks in your existing portfolio
- Topical high-risk political or economic issues
Once you find a keyword or phrase you are looking for, you can then quickly read the context around the word and identify any worrying information using the normal CTRL + F function.
A world of possibility
Our clients love SearCHeD because it uncovers opportunities like nothing else on the market. With a growing library of 600,000 reports, you can spot distress, identify business opportunities and conduct market research in seconds.
There are 3 main ways to use SearCHeD that our customers find the most valuable:
- Portfolio searches: You can search for relevant keywords in a narrow selection of companies to gain insights into your existing portfolio. For example, if you want to know which companies use 'supply chain financing' you can scan your whole portfolio looking for that phrase.
- Individual company review: You can use SearCHeD to look at a specific company that you plan to do business with. Depending on the risk indicator you are looking for, you can enter the keyword and check if it is mentioned.
- Universe search: This function allows you to check a keyword across the entire database at once. For example, you could determine which companies have ‘defined benefits pension’ risk.
You can download any of the information you find from your search as a PDF, CSV or Excel file. This makes it easy to present or copy and paste information for reporting purposes.
SearCHeD in action
In uncertain economic times, you need to know how the companies you work with might be affected. The volatile and complex conflict between Israel and Palestine will have consequences for UK companies.
Many of our clients have used SearCHeD in recent weeks to identify which companies have exposure to this situation. We used the tool to analyse the entire UK database and found:
- 787 companies where Israel is mentioned in the finances
- The number of individual word mentions was 4,489
- The 10 companies with the most mentions of Israel
- Leading gas-focused E&P company, Energean PLC, was number one with 236 mentions.
This ability to search for signs of distress at a granular level will give you an unbeatable edge when analysing risk and making investments. When it comes to growing your business, financial risk management is always a top priority. In an ever-changing business landscape, it shouldn’t be a complex undertaking.
If you’re ready to take your financial risk management to the next level, get in touch to try SearCHeD for free.
You won’t be disappointed.
