In November, the company registrar for the UK introduced new legal requirements for digital authentication, with 6% of appointments having complied with the incoming standards obligations by the New Year

Some 6% of senior business leadership appointments have complied with mandatory digital verification procedures during the first six weeks of a new regime recently implemented by Companies House.

On 18 November, the country’s official business register formally introduced a legal requirement for directors, owners and major shareholders, to verify their identity – principally via government’s GOV.UK One Login online authentication tool.

All newly registered leaders will need undertake the digital ID process within two weeks of their date of appointment. Existing directors and stakeholders have a window of up to one year in which to complete verification, with most required to do so as part of a wider company confirmation statement or other submission.

Companies House has recently published the first batch of data shedding light on the volume and proportion of directors that have complied with the new requirements.

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The transparency release reveals that, as of 31 December – six weeks and one day after the new mandate was introduced – a total of 823,771 appointments had been verified by the government body. This equates to 6.27% of the overall number of those that need to do so by 18 November 2026, the data indicates. It is not known how many individual people have gone through the process, as many may hold more than directorship or ownership position.

At the introduction of the new regime, there were a little over 13.1 million appointments that were in scope of the online checks – of which around 12.3 million remain outstanding as of 1 January.

While Companies House intends for One Login to be the primary means through which citizens will complete their ID verification, the organisation – which operates as an executive agency of the Department for Business and Trade – “is continuing to develop alternative options” for those disadvantaged by the requirement, a minister said in October.