credit-profile

---
name: credit-profile
description: Reads your own credit file before a lender does: a request built for each statutory report you are entitled to from Experian, Equifax and your own personal file, a plain reading of what a business credit score actually measures, a Companies House filing history check against every deadline that has passed, a register of every charge showing against the company, and a corrections list naming every item that is wrong or out of date with the evidence to fix it. Use weeks before you apply for anything, while there is still time to correct what is wrong.
---

# What a lender will see when they search you, read by you first, with time left to fix what is wrong

You give this your company number, your directors' names, your filing history as you understand it, and any credit dispute or default you already know about. You get back a request for the statutory reports you are entitled to from Experian and Equifax, a plain reading of what a business credit score measures and does not measure, a Companies House filing check against every deadline the company has had, a charges register reconciled against what you believe you owe, and a corrections list naming every item that looks wrong with the evidence needed to challenge it. It will not tell you your score, and it will not tell you what a lender will decide from it. A credit reference agency does not decide whether credit is offered, and neither does this.

## What it does

1. **Understand what a business credit score is actually measuring before requesting one.** Experian describes it plainly: "A business credit score is the measure of a business's creditworthiness, which is made up from a number of factors to understand the financial position of a business and its level of financial risk", scored on a scale where a figure above 80 reads as the top band and a figure at or below 40 is "usually too low for lenders." Creditsafe frames the same idea from the insolvency side: its score "reflects the likelihood of the business becoming insolvent in the next 12 months." Neither agency is describing a judgement of the business as a trading concern. Both are describing a statistical model built from payment behaviour, filing history and public record data, and the number moves for reasons that have nothing to do with how good the food is.

2. **Request the statutory report from each agency that actually holds one, and know which agency does not.** Experian and Equifax both hold business credit files and both provide a route to your own data. Equifax states the position for an individual in business directly: "entitled to receive a free statutory credit report for life", accessible online through myEquifax or by post, and confirms that "sole traders and partnerships are also legally entitled to request a Business Report by post" using a separate form. Experian's own commercial self-service product for viewing a company's own score is a paid subscription rather than a free statutory route, so request the file through the correct channel rather than assuming a free personal report and a company report are the same product. Creditsafe is different again: it is a company-data bureau rather than a personal credit reference agency, and it holds no equivalent free-for-life statutory report route, so a Creditsafe score is checked through its own free business credit check rather than a statutory request.

3. **Get your own personal file too, because a director's personal history can sit behind a company decision.** The Information Commissioner's Office confirms the individual right in plain terms: "You have the right to request a copy of the information held about your financial standing from any of the CRAs", and on cost, "Making this request is free of charge." The £2 fee once fixed by the Consumer Credit Act 1974 remains on the statute book but has been overtaken in practice by the free subject access right, and every agency now provides the free route as standard. Where a business is new, has thin trading history, or is a sole trader, a director's personal file often carries more weight in a lender's assessment than the young company file does, and it is the one document most owners have never actually opened.

4. **Read the Companies House filing history the way an underwriter reads it, because it is entirely public.** Companies House exists to "register company information and make it available to the public", which means anyone assessing the business is already looking at exactly what you can look at yourself. Check the confirmation statement and accounts filing dates against the deadlines that applied at the time, and read the late filing penalty position if any deadline was missed: "up to 1 month" costs 150 pounds, "1 to 3 months" costs 375 pounds, "3 to 6 months" costs 750 pounds, and "more than 6 months" costs 1,500 pounds, doubled "if your accounts are late 2 years in a row." A late filing marker is visible before a word is said in an application, and it is one of the few things on this list that can be fixed simply by filing on time from today forward.

5. **Check whether the company has ever been at risk of being struck off, and know the trigger.** The registrar can move to dissolve a company where there is "reasonable cause to believe the company is not carrying on business or in operation", a test that is explicitly triggered where "outstanding annual documents (confirmation statement or accounts) haven't been received." A strike off proceeding leaves a public trail through a Gazette notice, and even a company that responded in time and avoided dissolution carries that notice in its own filing history for as long as anyone chooses to look for it. Search the company's own name against past Gazette notices and record what is found.

6. **Build the charges register from the public record and reconcile it against what you believe is owed.** A charge is defined simply: "A charge is the security a company gives for a loan. For example, a mortgage is a type of charge", and section 859A of the Companies Act 2006 sets the registration deadline at "21 days beginning with the day after the date of creation of the charge." Missing that window has a real consequence stated plainly on the government's own guidance: where a charge is not registered in time, "it may be difficult to recover the debt if the company becomes insolvent", which cuts against the lender rather than the business, but a charge that should have been marked satisfied and was not reads as live debt to anyone checking the register. List every charge shown, mark it matched to a known facility, satisfied but unmarked, or unrecognised, and fix the unmarked ones before they sit in front of a new lender.

7. **Write the corrections list with the evidence next to each entry, not just the complaint.** A wrong entry on a credit file is common and is not automatically believed simply because it is disputed. For each item that looks wrong: what the file shows, what the correct position is, and the document that proves it, whether that is a bank statement showing a debt was settled, a court record showing a judgment was satisfied, or a filing receipt showing accounts were submitted on time. A dispute with evidence attached moves. A dispute that says only this is wrong does not.

8. **Separate the company's file from the director's file in every finding, and never let one contaminate the other on the page.** A personal default belongs in the personal section. A company late filing belongs in the company section. Conflating them makes a clean company look tainted by an old personal matter that a lender may not even weigh the same way, and makes a genuinely thin company file look stronger than it is by borrowing credibility from a director's long personal history. Keep the two columns separate throughout.

9. **Hand the filing checks, the deadline arithmetic and the register building to Codex, and keep the reading of what a score means here.** Write the inputs into a working folder, then run:

   ```
   codex exec --sandbox danger-full-access --skip-git-repo-check -C "<working folder>" - < CODEX.md
   ```

   Claude hands over the company number, the directors' names, the filing dates as the owner understands them, the charges the owner recognises with their facility names, and every item the owner believes is wrong on any file with its supporting document. Codex returns the filing history table with each deadline tested, the late filing penalty position if any, the charges reconciliation, and the corrections register. Codex never marks an entry as wrong without a supplied document behind it.

10. **Date the file and set a review date before the next application, not after.** Credit files change monthly and Companies House filings change every time something is submitted. Put the date every report was requested and every register was built on the cover, and put a review date roughly six weeks before the next planned application, so the file being handed to a lender is current rather than a snapshot from the spring.

## Then it checks

1. The file states, in plain words, what each agency's score measures and does not measure, and does not present any score itself as a prediction of loan approval.
2. A request has been recorded for the free statutory report from every agency that provides one, and the correct channel is named for each, distinguishing a free statutory route from a paid commercial subscription.
3. A request for the individual's own personal file is recorded separately from the company file request, with the free right stated.
4. Every Companies House filing deadline that has passed for this company is tested against the actual filing date, and any late filing states the applicable penalty band.
5. Every charge shown on the public register is listed with a status of matched, unmarked, or unrecognised, and no charge is omitted because it looks old or small.
6. Every entry in the corrections list names the specific wrong item, the correct position, and the document that proves it, and no entry is listed with an assertion alone.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never state a typical business credit score for an independent UK hospitality venue, a normal score band a lender accepts, or an average score by sector. No published figure exists for a single independent business, and a score compared against an invented benchmark tells an owner nothing true about their own file.
- Never predict what a lender will decide from any score or filing history. The agencies state their own limit clearly: they do not tell a lender whether to offer credit, they supply data a lender's own process then applies.
- Never mark a disputed entry as incorrect without a supplied document proving it. An unsupported complaint stays recorded as a complaint, not as a correction.
- Never merge a director's personal credit information into the company's own file, or the reverse. The two are different legal persons with different records, and collapsing them into one narrative misstates both.
- Never treat a paid commercial credit monitoring subscription as a substitute for the free statutory right to see your own data. Where a free route exists, it is used first, and a paid product is recorded as a separate, optional choice.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own agency correspondence and Companies House filings, and for their own accountant to review before any correction is submitted or any figure is relied on in an application. Where a dispute concerns a registered charge, a court judgment or a personal guarantee, it is also for their own solicitor. It is not advice and it is not a statement of what any lender will conclude from any file.

## Built from
- Experian, "What is a business credit score?", https://www.experian.co.uk/blogs/latest-thinking/small-business/what-is-business-credit-score/, published 7 August 2026, read 23 September 2026: the definition and scoring bands in step 1.
- Creditsafe, "What is a business credit score?", https://www.creditsafe.com/gb/en/blog/credit-and-risk/what-is-a-business-credit-score.html, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the insolvency-likelihood framing in step 1, the report contents and the free business credit check route in step 2.
- Equifax, "Statutory Report", https://www.equifax.co.uk/products/credit/statutory-report, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the free-for-life statutory report right, the access channels, and the separate postal route for sole traders and partnerships, in step 2.
- Information Commissioner's Office, "Credit", https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/credit/, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the individual's statutory right to their own file and its free cost, in step 3.
- Consumer Credit Act 1974, section 158, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/39/section/158, stated on the page as up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 23 September 2026, read 23 September 2026: the historic £2 fee provision reconciled against the current free practice in step 3.
- Companies House and GOV.UK, "About us", https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the public register statement in step 4.
- Companies House and GOV.UK, "Prepare annual accounts for a private limited company: penalties for late filing", https://www.gov.uk/annual-accounts/penalties-for-late-filing, no publication date shown on the page, read 23 September 2026: the four penalty bands and the doubling rule in step 4.
- Companies House and GOV.UK, "Strike off, dissolution and restoration", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/striking-off-or-dissolving-a-limited-company/striking-off-or-dissolving-a-limited-company, updated 4 December 2025, read 23 September 2026: the strike off trigger for missing annual documents in step 5.
- Companies Act 2006, section 859A, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/859A, stated on the page as up to date with all changes known to be in force on or before 22 September 2026, read 23 September 2026: the 21 day charge registration deadline in step 6.
- Companies House and GOV.UK, "Register a charge (mortgage) for a limited company", https://www.gov.uk/register-a-charge-mortgage-for-a-limited-company, updated 1 February 2026, read 23 September 2026: the definition of a charge and the consequence of late registration in step 6.

# credit-profile

## You are given
One UK business and its directors preparing to check their own credit position before applying for finance. The company number, the company name, and the list of directors with their names. The company's filing history as the owner understands it: the date the company was incorporated, every accounting reference date and the accounts filing date for each year, every confirmation statement due date and filing date. Any Gazette strike off notice the owner is aware of, with its date. The charges the owner recognises as genuinely outstanding against the company, each with a lender name, an original amount and a status of open or believed satisfied. Every item the owner believes is wrong on any credit file, whether the company's or a director's own personal file, each with a description of the error, the correct position, and the name of a supporting document. All judgement calls, including which items to dispute and which reports to request, have already been made by the owner and are supplied to you.

## Produce
Write into a `./credit-profile-output/` folder:

1. `report-requests.csv` with columns: `agency_name`, `report_type`, `applies_to`, `access_channel_verbatim`, `cost_basis`, `requested_date`. `report_type` is exactly one of `statutory business report`, `statutory personal report`, `free business credit check`. `applies_to` is exactly one of `company`, `director`. `cost_basis` is exactly one of `free`, `paid subscription`, `not stated`. One row per agency and report type supplied by the owner.
2. `filing-history.csv` with columns: `filing_type`, `period_or_reference_date`, `deadline_date`, `filed_date`, `days_late`, `status`. `filing_type` is exactly one of `annual accounts`, `confirmation statement`. `status` is exactly one of `on time`, `late`, `not yet due`, `not filed`. `days_late` is calculated as `filed_date` minus `deadline_date` where positive, otherwise left empty.
3. `late-filing-penalties.csv` with columns: `filing_type`, `period_or_reference_date`, `days_late`, `penalty_band`, `penalty_amount_gbp`, `doubled_second_consecutive_year`. `penalty_band` is exactly one of `up to 1 month`, `1 to 3 months`, `3 to 6 months`, `more than 6 months`, `not applicable`. `penalty_amount_gbp` is exactly one of `150`, `375`, `750`, `1500`, or empty where `penalty_band` is `not applicable`, doubled where `doubled_second_consecutive_year` is `yes`. Only accounts filings carry a penalty; a confirmation statement row always reads `not applicable`.
4. `strike-off-history.csv` with columns: `notice_type`, `notice_date`, `trigger_reason_verbatim`, `resolved`. `resolved` is `yes`, `no` or `not stated`. One row per Gazette notice the owner supplied; if none was supplied, write a single row stating `notice_type` as `none supplied`.
5. `charges-register.csv` with columns: `charge_ref`, `lender_name_verbatim`, `registration_date`, `owner_recognises`, `owner_believes_status`, `reconciliation_status`. `charge_ref` is C001 upward, one row per charge the owner supplied. `owner_recognises` is `yes` or `no`. `owner_believes_status` is exactly one of `open`, `believed satisfied`. `reconciliation_status` is exactly one of `matched`, `unmarked: owner believes satisfied but no discharge supplied`, `unrecognised: owner does not recognise this charge`.
6. `corrections-register.csv` with columns: `entry_ref`, `applies_to`, `file_shows_verbatim`, `correct_position_verbatim`, `evidence_document_name`, `evidence_supplied`. `entry_ref` is E001 upward. `applies_to` is exactly one of `company`, `director`. `evidence_supplied` is `yes` only where a named document was supplied, otherwise `no`, and every `no` row is also listed in `gaps.md`.
7. `gaps.md` a numbered list of: every filing history row with a missing deadline or filed date; every charge marked `unmarked` or `unrecognised`; every corrections register row where `evidence_supplied` is `no`; every report request with `cost_basis` reading `not stated`; and any supplied text containing an em dash character.

## Rules
- Codex tests dates against deadlines, calculates penalty bands, reconciles the charges register and records corrections. It never decides whether a disputed entry is actually wrong, never estimates a filing date, and never assumes a charge is satisfied without a supplied discharge or the owner's own statement recorded as a belief rather than a fact.
- Never mark `evidence_supplied` as `yes` without a named document. A description of the error alone is not evidence.
- Never write a benchmark figure of any kind into any file: no typical score, no average number of days late that lenders tolerate, no normal number of charges for a business this size. None exists for a single independent UK hospitality business and none is to be recorded.
- Never write any statement, in any file, about what a lender will conclude from any score, filing record or charge. That judgement belongs to the lender's own process.
- Never combine a director's personal file findings with the company's own findings in the same row of any file. `applies_to` keeps them apart in every file where the distinction matters.
- Never calculate a late filing penalty on a confirmation statement. Only annual accounts carry the four penalty bands; a late confirmation statement is recorded as `late` in `filing-history.csv` with no monetary penalty attached.
- Use British English, GBP written as `GBP` or the pound sign, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dash characters in any file you write, and any supplied text containing one is recorded verbatim and flagged in `gaps.md`.
- Every quoted lender name, agency name and document name is copied exactly, including its punctuation and capitalisation.
- Every file ends with this line: this is a working document prepared for the owner to check against their own agency correspondence and Companies House filings, and for their own accountant to review before any correction is submitted or any figure is relied on in an application. Where a dispute concerns a registered charge, a court judgment or a personal guarantee, it is also for their own solicitor. It is not advice and it is not a statement of what any lender will conclude from any file.

## Return
The absolute path of every file written, the row count of each CSV, the count of report requests by report type and cost basis, the count of filing history rows marked late with the total penalty figure from late-filing-penalties.csv, whether any strike off notice was supplied and its resolved status, the charges register reconciliation counts by status, the corrections register count split by evidence supplied yes or no, and the gaps.md item count.