Tag: uk

UK Economic Crime & Corporate Transparency Bill: OpenCorporates provides expert input

Is the UK’s Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill up to scratch? The bill, designed to strengthen the UK’s defences against financial crime and promote corporate transparency (including long-promised reform to Companies House), is currently making its way through the UK Parliament on its way towards becoming legislation. A major provision in the Bill is … Continue reading UK Economic Crime & Corporate Transparency Bill: OpenCorporates provides expert input →

OpenCorporates collaborates with the Financial Conduct Authority on Covid-related fraud prevention

With the onset of Covid-19, businesses and individuals have needed to navigate unprecedented difficulties and change. The resulting disruption is being taken advantage of by would-be fraudsters, who are using the pandemic to perpetrate fraud and scams. Technology and data have key roles to play in improving the detection of fraudulent activity, such as through … Continue reading OpenCorporates collaborates with the Financial Conduct Authority on Covid-related fraud prevention →

UK Beneficial Ownership information now in OpenCorporates

On Friday UK Companies House published the first data from its new 'Persons of Significant Control' (PSC) register (colloquially known as Beneficial Ownership). This is a pretty big deal, for a number of reasons: It's the world's first public national beneficial ownership register It's the first structured beneficial ownership data to be releases publicly It's being … Continue reading UK Beneficial Ownership information now in OpenCorporates →

Another UK company data milestone: Accounts as open data

Update: In record time we've starting importing Companies House XBRL data, and extracting the key financial figures from it (you can also click through to the underlying accounts themselves). It will take a few days for this to appear on all filing companies (about 60% of companies have filed XBRL accounts): This morning at 10am, … Continue reading Another UK company data milestone: Accounts as open data →

Open company data on the rise: featuring G8, World Bank, EITI…

This month has been a good month for open corporate data, with a number of significant developments, all of them positive, and OpenCorporates is proud to have played a significant part in many of them. First, and perhaps most exciting for us has been the launch of the Open Company Data Index, supported by the World Bank … Continue reading Open company data on the rise: featuring G8, World Bank, EITI… →

Are DUNS numbers the crack cocaine of ID systems (and is the UK the latest addict)?

Last month the US General Accounting Office, produced an excellent report on the use of Dun & Bradstreet's proprietary DUNS ID system by the Federal Government, specifically the GSA, its procurement and administration arm. In a fairly devastating report, it explains why the ID system was problematic: "GSA believes that Dun & Bradstreet effectively has a … Continue reading Are DUNS numbers the crack cocaine of ID systems (and is the UK the latest addict)? →

OpenCorporates: The directors’ cut

One of the most often requested features for OpenCorporates, especially by journalists, is for us to extract information about the directors and officers for the over 35 million companies we've opened up. And as Alex Howard reported on O'Reilly Radar last week, that feature is now live (we also gave a sneak peak during our presentation at … Continue reading OpenCorporates: The directors’ cut →

Case study: Fixing broken government information with open data

This is a tale of good intentions, bad practices, and broken processes. Although it's superficially about charity and company data, in fact it's really about how the public sector is failing to use the open data now being produced, and in the process increasing costs and stifling promising open data business models.   One of … Continue reading Case study: Fixing broken government information with open data →