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Insolvency data January 20223

ended 14. February 2023

The Insolvency Service has just published the official insolvency data for January 2023. Key points below. Any thoughts, send them across ASAP as this story is BREAKING.

The number of registered company insolvencies in January 2023 was 1,671:

  • 7% higher than in the same month in the previous year (1,567 in January 2022), and
  • 11% higher than the number registered three years previously (pre-pandemic; 1,502 in January 2020).

There were 189 compulsory liquidations in January 2023, which is 52% more than in January 2022, but 36% lower than in January 2020. Numbers of compulsory liquidations have increased from historical lows seen during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, partly as a result of an increase in winding-up petitions presented by HMRC.

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Steven Mather
Lawyer & Director at Steven Mather Solicitor
These statistics are only the beginning. Compared to January 2020, the figures for company liquidations are still 36% lower. 2020 was the high point, with a total of 22,109 company insolvencies, the highest since 2009. Extrapolating the data for January 2023 across 12 months, we arrive at around 20,000 corporate insolvencies so still lower than in 2020 and 2009. These data will be very different even as early as May. More concerning is personal bankruptcy data. Bankruptcies were 5% higher this year than in January 2022. Debtor applications were 2% higher and creditor petitions were 21% higher than January 2022. While the fact overall bankruptices were still much lower than in 2020 and 2009 (by around 60%) the fact that creditor petitions are up 21% is alarming.
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Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
It's no surprise insolvencies are up compared to last year and pre-pandemic numbers. The triple whammy of higher energy bills, increased finance costs and sluggish customer demand will have a real impact to come. These numbers are really only a trickle before the dam breaks. Government intervention in the form of business tax cuts could mitigate this, but policy ideas seem few and far between with the current lot inside Number 10.
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Ed Rimmer
CEO at Time Finance
Insolvencies are the inevitable outcome of an unsustainable situation as more and more businesses struggle to make ends meet. The figures are staggering. Running a business is difficult enough, but having to contend with high inflation, soaring costs, supply chain challenges and weakening consumer demand is a rut many businesses simply can't get out of. The real statistics we should be focusing on are how many businesses we can look to save by putting the right financial support and backing in place. This is something the Government must prioritise to ensure that we prevent more perfectly viable businesses from going under.
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Mark Grant
Business Finance Adviser at The Business Finance Branch
Year-on-year data would always show an uptick in numbers of insolvencies unfortunately as different groups can take action post-Covid period, including HMRC and banks on Covid loan defaults. More promising is cashflow lenders' appetite to support viable businesses where cash is just not in the right place at the right time to pay their liabilities. We can hope that this stops good businesses from getting pushed towards an insolvency cliff edge when it is preventable.