S&s platform risk

purple_rose

Thanks, good to know how thats traced.

bowlhead99

TheMoniac wrote: »

I opened a login account with them (CheckFree that is, not II) and got the full credit analysis report which was useful as it showed a bit more analysis and supplier information which is not stuff that is filed at Companies House.

Generally the limited bits of supplier information you can get from the free services that go beyond the official Companies House stuff, are worth what you pay for them, or less. They'll just scrape data from their sources, and package it up for you with terms of service that makes their liability almost minimal, because they're often getting the info from places which likewise have a limitation of liability and may have outdated or irrelevant bits of info with data points missing which would be needed for you to put the data you do get into context.

The parent was listed there but because it's not a UK registered parent a separate report would be needed for that company. I didn't get a report on the parent company because overseas company reports can be a bit more costly and accounts are not always available for non-UK companies so I didn't take it any further.

Not a great deal of point pulling the overseas data really, where the parent is just a holding company; limited usefulness of credit reports as it's not a trading business. And there may be various layers of holding companies as you go up the structure to the investment funds that ultimately own the business, and you would expect them to be in jurisdictions that don't make you publicly file your private company financial statements for just anyone to pop by and have a nosey.

What you can say is, just like many of its rivals, it's a company owned by investors who have access to capital and presumably want to enhance the value of the business rather than see their investment become worthless. And private equity funds typically have ready access to capital for follow-on investments where necessary to buy or build solutions to improve/ grow the business organically or through acquisition. But at the end of the day, no investor in a limited company (whether public or private) has to put their hand in their pocket to bail out a problematic business if they really really don't want to. Their liability is limited to what they put in, thus the name (limited co or public limited co). In that respect it's the same as an HL or an AJ Bell or others.