RiskAlert247: How This UK Startup Transforms Companies House Data Into Real-Time Fraud Detection

When Graham Barrow, founder of RiskAlert247, stood before an audience at Chartered Accountants’ Hall in December, he demonstrated something alarming. Using a blend of software tools and detective work, he showed how 4,127 new businesses were registered at Companies House by 4:30 pm on a single Monday. Extrapolate those numbers across a year, and you’re looking at roughly one million new companies. The problem? A significant proportion were never intended to do real business.

Barrow knows this territory intimately. With 25 years in financial services, including stints at HSBC and Deutsche Bank addressing major regulatory failures, and a role at the UK’s Financial Services Authority during the 2008 credit crisis, he has spent his career unraveling money laundering schemes. Now he’s channeling that expertise into RiskAlert247, a Scottish startup that aims to transform how businesses and banks identify fraudulent companies hiding in plain sight on the UK’s company register.

The Companies House Problem

The scale of fraud exploiting Companies House has reached troubling proportions. In 2022, approximately 10,000 people applied to have their addresses removed from the register after discovering they were being used without consent to register fake businesses. By 2023, the UK saw 900,000 company incorporations, with fraud accounting for an estimated 41% of all crime in England and Wales, costing 1.2 billion pounds according to UK Finance.

Companies House, founded in 1844, operates on a principle of good faith. It registers firms without investigation, provided forms are complete and properly delivered. This hands-off approach, designed for an era of trust, has made the register a tool for criminals. They create shell companies using stolen identities, fabricated addresses, and false information to open bank accounts, secure loans, and launder money across multiple jurisdictions.

The government has taken notice. The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 granted Companies House new powers to query suspicious information and reject fraudulent filings. By mid-2025, the agency reported querying and removing false information affecting 100,400 companies and rejecting 10,200 suspicious applications. Yet the reforms, including mandatory identity verification launching in autumn 2025, address only part of the problem. Recent analysis shows companies with no UK directors are 17 times more likely to display fraud indicators than those with at least one UK-based director.

Building the Detection Engine

Incorporated in Scotland in January 2022, RiskAlert247 emerged from what its website describes as a collaboration between financial crime experts and a big data analytics company. Barrow, who serves as co-founder and director, is the public face of the venture. He co-hosts The Dark Money Files podcast, a widely followed program on money laundering that attracts listeners globally from law enforcement, banking, and regulatory sectors. The company has not disclosed other co-founders or any external funding rounds, suggesting it operates as a bootstrapped venture.

The startup’s core mission is straightforward: combat the fraudulent use of personal information and residential addresses to create fake businesses. Its platform analyzes Companies House data against 168 red flags, ranking companies by risk in real time. The system can identify suspicious patterns like multiple companies registered to the same address on the same day, directors with conflicting nationality claims across different filings, or businesses with implausibly high capital declarations that claim to be dormant.

The platform offers what RiskAlert247 calls a “powerful investigation UI” that can integrate into internal onboarding systems, with 24-hour support. For individual users, membership costs 10 pounds annually, a low barrier designed to democratize access to fraud detection tools. The company operates from Hardengreen Business Centre in Dalkeith, Midlothian, and is classified under business software development and information services.

While RiskAlert247 has not disclosed specific client names, the startup’s work has gained recognition in financial crime circles. Barrow’s expertise is regularly sought by investigative journalists at major newspapers, and he has advised organizations including Transparency International, Global Witness, and Tax Justice Network. He also presented recommendations to the Danish Parliamentary Committee on AML, many of which were incorporated into Danish regulatory reforms.

The Wider Context

The need for tools like RiskAlert247 reflects systemic vulnerabilities in how the UK manages corporate transparency. Analysis by Tax Policy Associates found that 900,000 active UK companies have no UK directors, making them effectively untouchable for enforcement purposes. In October 2023, a single street in Worksop, Nottinghamshire saw 16 addresses used to register fake firms over one weekend, all in the name of one person.

These schemes have real consequences. Victims discover their identities have been stolen when debt collectors appear at their doors or their credit scores plummet. Banks and government departments get tricked into approving loans. Law enforcement struggles to trace the true owners across multiple jurisdictions. Economic crime costs the UK economy billions annually.

For banks and financial institutions bound by strict Know Your Customer and anti-money laundering regulations, Companies House has become an unreliable source. Many institutions wrongly assume that government-operated registers contain verified information.

RiskAlert247’s approach addresses this gap by treating Companies House data not as ground truth but as raw material requiring verification. Barrow’s social media posts frequently highlight unusual registrations, such as companies simultaneously listing SIC codes for pig farming, nuclear fuel processing, and pharmaceutical wholesale, or streets where dozens of companies register at non-existent addresses.

Looking Forward

Recent data suggests Companies House reforms are having an impact. Weekly company registrations dropped roughly 30% after new identity verification rules took effect in late 2025, falling from 18,199 incorporations in the week before implementation to fewer than 13,000 in the weeks following. The decline indicates either legitimate businesses facing new friction or fraudsters deterred by enhanced scrutiny.

Yet challenges remain. The reforms did not fully address fake address usage, and criminals adapt quickly. As identity verification tightens, fraudsters may increasingly use foreign directors beyond UK authorities’ reach. This evolving threat landscape creates ongoing demand for analytical tools that can spot anomalies in company filings.

For RiskAlert247, the opportunity lies in becoming an essential verification layer for organizations that cannot afford to take Companies House data at face value. Whether the startup can scale its technology and build a sustainable business model competing against established compliance platforms remains to be seen. But in a market where fraud costs exceed one billion pounds annually and trust in corporate registers has eroded, the demand for better detection tools is clear.

Barrow’s work spans multiple fronts: advising regulators, educating through his podcast, and building commercial solutions through RiskAlert247. His central argument is simple. When incorporating a company takes minutes and costs 12 pounds, with minimal identity checks, the system becomes a fraud engine. Until structural reforms close those gaps, businesses need tools that can see through the facade. RiskAlert247 aims to be one of them.