How to read a B2Verify Trust Score report

The fastest way to understand a B2Verify report is to look at one. This guide walks through every panel of a real report, end to end, using a fictional high-risk supplier – Acme Industrial Solutions Ltd (12345678) – as the worked example.

Acme Industrial Solutions Ltd, Director A, Director B, HoldCo Limited and Offshore Holdings (Bermuda) Ltd are entirely fictional examples constructed for illustration. The patterns shown — including dissolution histories, shared addresses, and ownership chains — do not refer to any real company, individual, or registered entity. Any resemblance is coincidental and unintended.

The header – identity at a glance

The first thing you see on any company page is a strip with the registered name, Companies House number, status, incorporation date and registered office. Match these against whatever the supplier has put on their quote or contract before you read another panel.

The Trust Score – one number, one band

The Trust Score is the panel you'll glance at first on every report. It's a 0 – 100 number computed deterministically from the public register, banded into Low (75 – 100), Medium (49 – 74) and High (0 – 48).

For a full explanation of the bands and what each means in practice, see Understanding the B2Verify Trust Score.

The score breakdown – nine dimensions, one row each

Every report shows the score broken down into the nine dimensions that feed into it. Each row is a self-contained reading: the sub-score, the maximum, and the specific reason the dimension landed where it did.

Deductions – explicit penalties, listed separately

Four classes of issue reduce the score directly, on top of the dimension scores above. These are listed in their own panel so you can see exactly what's been taken off and why.

Risk signals – every flag in one place

The flags panel surfaces every individual risk signal the scoring engine raised – not just the ones tied to deductions. It's the human-readable layer over the structured score: each flag points at a specific data point and what's wrong with it.

Officers – appointment history matters more than current snapshot

The officers panel lists current directors and their appointment dates. On its own that's not very informative – what makes the officer panel useful is clicking through to each director's full appointment history across every UK company they've ever been involved with.

PSCs – who actually owns this?

The PSC (People with Significant Control) panel shows who owns more than 25% of the company. The pattern to read for here is whether the PSC is an individual person or another company – and if it's another company, whether the chain ever resolves to a named human.

Filing history – the timeline of events

The filing history panel is the audit trail. Every event the company has reported to Companies House appears here in reverse chronological order – accounts, confirmation statements, officer changes, address changes, charges, gazette notices.

Address quality – virtual office detection

The address panel shows the registered office and how it stacks up: shared address counts, known virtual-office postcodes, undeliverable flags from Companies House.

Notices — observation, not accusation

When you see an Identity Inconsistency, Recurring Pattern, or Complex Ownership Notice on a report, this is an observation of public register data — not an accusation of wrongdoing. The pattern may have legitimate explanations: a typo on a Companies House filing, a corporate restructuring, a planned acquisition. Use the Notice as a prompt for further verification, not a verdict.

Linked Companies panel

The Linked Companies panel surfaces other UK companies connected to the one you are viewing, organised into four layers:

• Layer 1 — Shared people: other companies where the same officers serve.
• Layer 2 — Shared address: other companies registered at the same address (often legitimate — accountants, virtual offices).
• Layer 3 — Recurring pattern: dissolved companies in similar industries within 12 months.
• Layer 4 — Complex ownership: multi-layer corporate ownership chains visible from PSC filings.

Layers 1 and 2 are factual lists. Layers 3 and 4 only appear when the algorithm detects the specific structural pattern, and each carries the same observation-not-accusation framing as the Notices above.

The PDF report and the monitor button

Two pieces of UI live below the main report:

• Download as PDF – the entire report as a print-friendly document. Useful for compliance files and for sharing internally with people who don't use B2Verify.
• Monitor this company – the bell icon, top right. Adding a company to your monitored list means you get an email the next time the daily check picks up a material change on the register: a new filing, status change, director appointment or removal, new charge.

What to do with all of this

Reports are a tool, not a verdict. Three rules of thumb:

1. Read the dimension reasons before the score. The score is a summary; the reasons are the data. If you disagree with the score, the reasons tell you which signal to verify on Companies House yourself.
2. Stack the flags. One flag on its own is usually a conversation. Three or more in the same direction (e.g. virtual office + address churn + opaque PSC) is the pattern that should change your contracting terms – upfront payment, escrow, smaller initial order, or simply a different supplier.
3. Treat the report as input, not output. It tells you where to look first. The actual decision – to trade, on what terms, with what controls – is yours, and depends on context the register doesn't capture.

---

Want to apply this to a real counterparty? Search the B2Verify directory – every UK limited company's report has the same structure as the Acme walkthrough above. Or, before you check a counterparty, brush up on the 12-point supplier due diligence checklist.