Glossary
Plain-English definitions of the specialist terminology Senserity uses, covering corporate structure, compliance, data sources, and Senserity-specific vocabulary.
The glossary is the canonical reference for specialist terminology used across Senserity. It covers corporate-structure vocabulary (PSC, UBO, shadow director), compliance terms (Modern Slavery Act, Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001), data sources (Companies House, the London Gazette, Dilisense), and the Senserity-specific terms that appear in the product interface (insight test, DRV-055, credit, watchlist).
The same definitions power the small question-mark tooltips inside the Senserity app, so what you read here is what a teammate sees when they hover over a term in a card.
Showing 52 of 52 terms.
- administration
A rescue procedure run by a court-appointed administrator.
Administration is a formal insolvency procedure under the Insolvency Act 1986 designed to either rescue the company as a going concern, achieve a better result for creditors than liquidation, or realise property to pay secured/preferential creditors. While in administration, the company is shielded from most creditor action (a moratorium is in force).
- annual accounts
The company's yearly financial statements filed at Companies House.
Statutory financial accounts must be delivered to Companies House annually. The complexity depends on company size: micro, small, medium or large. Late filing incurs automatic penalties and sustained non-filing can lead to strike-off. Senserity parses iXBRL-tagged accounts to extract financial metrics.
- appointment
A director or secretary being added to a company.
Officer appointments must be notified to Companies House within 14 days. Senserity monitors new appointments as an early signal of changes in control, governance, or strategic direction.
- attestation campaign
A batch of compliance questionnaires sent to a group of suppliers.
A campaign bundles together a template (the questions), a list of recipients (the suppliers), and a deadline. Recipients receive a unique link to respond without needing a Senserity login. You track responses, chase non-responders, and approve or reject submissions from the campaign dashboard.
- category score
A score for one of the nine risk categories.
Each company is scored independently across the nine risk categories: Financial, Governance, Compliance, Cyber, Legal, Media, Operational, Social & ESG, and Network. The category score is a weighted aggregation of the individual tests that apply to the company. The overall score (DRV-055) combines these using the category weightings.
- CCEW
The Charity Commission for England and Wales.
The CCEW registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, publishing each charity's objects, trustees, accounts, and any regulatory inquiries. Senserity ingests the CCEW bulk dataset to cross-reference director and PSC relationships into the charity sector.
- charge
Security granted over a company's assets to a lender.
A charge gives the lender (chargee) a right to the company's specified property if the debt is not repaid. Charges must be registered at Companies House within 21 days of creation or they risk being void against liquidators and other creditors. Active, satisfied, released, and outstanding charges are all tracked on the public register.
- Companies House
The UK registrar of companies and the primary source for company data.
Companies House holds the statutory register of UK companies, recording incorporations, officer appointments, filings, charges, PSCs and dissolutions. Senserity ingests both the bulk monthly CSV snapshot and the real-time streaming feed, supplemented by the public API for on-demand detail.
- company secretary
An officer who supports compliance, filings, and board governance.
Private companies are not required to appoint a secretary, but public companies (PLCs) must have one. The secretary's duties typically include maintaining statutory registers, filing annual returns, and supporting the board. Senserity tracks secretary appointments and terminations as a governance signal.
- confidence
How much weight we place on a particular finding.
Confidence reflects the quality and specificity of the evidence underlying a test result. A high-confidence result is based on an exact match in an authoritative source; a low-confidence one might depend on name-matching or indirect inference. Low-confidence findings are surfaced but weighted less in scoring.
- confirmation statement
An annual filing confirming the company's basic information.
A Companies House filing (formerly the annual return) confirming that the company's details on file — registered office, officers, PSCs, share capital, SIC codes — are up to date. Must be filed at least once every 12 months. Late confirmation statements can trigger strike-off action.
- credit
The unit used to meter enrichment and report generation.
Each tier includes a monthly credit allocation that resets on your billing date. Different enrichment actions and report types consume different numbers of credits. When monthly credits run out, topup credits are drawn from next; if both are exhausted, paid enrichments pause until top-up or renewal.
- Creditsafe
A commercial credit risk data provider.
Creditsafe provides credit risk reports, scores, and credit limit recommendations for UK and international companies. Senserity integrates with the Creditsafe API to pull detailed credit assessments on demand. Creditsafe enrichment is credit-gated because each pull incurs a per-report fee.
- Cyber Essentials
A UK government-backed baseline certification for cyber security.
Cyber Essentials is an NCSC-backed scheme that certifies an organisation against five technical controls: firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection, and patch management. Cyber Essentials Plus additionally requires a hands-on technical audit. Certificates are issued by accredited bodies (IASME is the national partner) and are valid for 12 months.
- Dilisense
A sanctions, PEP and adverse-media data provider.
Dilisense aggregates global sanctions lists, politically exposed persons registers, and adverse media feeds into a single searchable dataset. Senserity uses Dilisense as one input to its adverse media and sanctions checks against watchlisted companies and their officers.
- Director
An officer legally responsible for managing a company's affairs.
UK company directors are appointed to the board and are subject to statutory duties under the Companies Act 2006. Every private limited company must have at least one director who is a natural person. Directors are separately recorded in Companies House and can be active, resigned, or disqualified.
- display type
How an insight test's finding is rendered in the UI.
Every test has a display type that controls how the result is shown: a simple badge, a table, a timeline, a bar chart, a network fragment, and so on. Display types are registered centrally so that new tests can reuse existing visualisations or introduce new ones as needed.
- disqualified director
A person legally barred from acting as a company director.
Under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986, a person can be disqualified for up to 15 years for misconduct such as wrongful trading, failure to keep proper accounts, or tax fraud. The disqualified directors register is public and Senserity cross-checks it against officers of watchlisted companies.
- dissolved
The company has been formally struck off the register.
Dissolution removes a company from the Companies House register. It can be voluntary (the directors apply to strike off) or compulsory (the Registrar initiates it, typically because the company has failed to file accounts or confirmation statements). Any remaining assets pass to the Crown as bona vacantia. Dissolved companies can be restored in some cases.
- DRV-055
The overall Senserity risk score for a company.
DRV-055 is the top-level risk score, running from 0 to 100 where lower is better. It is computed by combining the nine category scores (DRV-056 to DRV-064) using weightings defined in app_scoring_weights. A value below 20 is generally considered safe to onboard; higher values warrant closer review.
- enrichment
The process of pulling external data about a company into Senserity.
Enrichment covers everything from Companies House profile fetch and officer history, through adverse media scans, to optional paid modules like Creditsafe. Each module has its own credit cost and refresh cadence. Enrichment output is what the insight tests run against.
- Environment Agency
The environmental regulator for England.
The Environment Agency regulates pollution, waste, water resources and environmental permits in England. It publishes enforcement actions, fines, and the environmental performance of regulated businesses. Senserity ingests Environment Agency public datasets as part of its ESG risk assessment.
- Gazette notice
A formal public notice published in the official Gazette.
The London, Edinburgh and Belfast Gazettes are the UK's official journals of record. Insolvency events, strike-off proposals, appointments of liquidators and administrators, and other statutory notices are published there. Senserity ingests the Gazette feed to track corporate events as they happen.
- Gender Pay Gap
Mandatory reporting of pay differences between men and women.
UK employers with 250 or more employees must publish gender pay gap figures annually, covering mean and median hourly pay gaps, bonus gaps, and the proportion of men and women in each pay quartile. Reports are submitted to a government service and made publicly available.
- health score
A 0–100 score where higher is better — used at the test level.
Individual insight tests (Phase A, B, and C) report results on a health scale: 100 means healthy, 0 means concerning. Category scores and the overall score invert this at aggregation time so that risk scores follow the convention of higher-is-worse.
- HSE
The Health and Safety Executive — UK workplace safety regulator.
The HSE enforces health-and-safety law in Great Britain. It publishes enforcement notices, prosecutions, and fatalities data. Senserity matches these records against watchlisted companies to flag serious workplace incidents and enforcement history.
- IASME
The national certification body that runs Cyber Essentials in the UK.
IASME is the sole Cyber Essentials partner for the NCSC. It also offers its own IASME Cyber Assurance scheme, a broader information assurance framework aligned with ISO 27001. Senserity verifies Cyber Essentials and IASME certifications directly against the IASME register.
- ICO registration
Registration with the UK data protection regulator.
Most UK organisations that process personal data must pay an annual data protection fee to the Information Commissioner's Office. The ICO publishes the register of fee-payers, showing the data controller's name, public register entry, tier, and renewal date. Unregistered data controllers risk enforcement action.
- in liquidation
Formal wind-up — assets are being realised to pay creditors.
Liquidation is the process of bringing a company to an end by selling its assets, paying creditors in a statutory order, and distributing any surplus to shareholders. It can be voluntary (initiated by the company) or compulsory (court-ordered, usually on a creditor's petition). A liquidator is appointed to run the process.
- insight test
One of 676+ individual checks Senserity runs against a company.
Each insight test evaluates a single aspect of a company — a late filing, a sanctions hit, a PSC gap, an SSL certificate expiry, and so on. Tests have a code (e.g. FIN-034), a severity, a display type, and belong to one of the nine risk categories. The full catalogue is published at /help/reference/test-catalogue.
- ISO 27001
The international standard for information security management systems.
ISO/IEC 27001 specifies requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving an information security management system (ISMS). Certification is issued by accredited bodies following an independent audit and is typically valid for three years with annual surveillance.
- Modern Slavery Act
UK law requiring a public statement on supply-chain slavery risk.
Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 requires commercial organisations operating in the UK with an annual turnover of £36m or more to publish an annual slavery-and-human-trafficking statement. Senserity checks the government's Modern Slavery Statement Registry for in-scope companies.
- mortgage (company)
A form of charge where property secures a loan to the company.
In a company-law context, a mortgage is a type of charge over property (typically real estate or other tangible assets). The lender retains a legal interest until the debt is repaid. Registered at Companies House like any other charge. Senserity distinguishes between outstanding mortgages and those that have been satisfied or released.
- National Archives case law
The official online archive of UK court judgments.
Find Case Law (caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk) publishes the judgments and decisions of UK courts and tribunals. Senserity searches the archive for named companies and their officers to surface litigation, uses Claude to summarise relevant judgments, and classifies them by subject matter.
- OSCR
The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.
OSCR is the independent regulator for Scottish charities. It maintains the Scottish Charity Register and publishes trustees, accounts, and regulatory decisions. Senserity ingests OSCR data alongside the CCEW register so charity links are captured across the whole UK.
- PSC
Person with Significant Control.
An individual or corporate entity that owns more than 25% of a company's shares or voting rights, has the right to appoint or remove the majority of directors, or otherwise has significant influence or control. UK companies must report their PSCs to Companies House and keep a PSC register.
- Red Flag
A finding we think you should look at first, regardless of score.
Red Flags are the highest-priority findings — typically critical-severity failures on high-confidence tests. They are shown at the top of every company profile, independently of the numerical score, so that a single catastrophic finding doesn't get buried by otherwise-good signals.
- registered office
The official address to which legal documents are sent.
Every UK company must have a registered office in the part of the UK where it is incorporated (England and Wales, Scotland, or Northern Ireland). It is the public address on Companies House, used for serving legal documents. Frequent changes to the registered office can be an indicator worth reviewing.
- report
A PDF due diligence document generated from a company's insights.
Reports capture a point-in-time snapshot of a company's risk profile as a branded PDF, suitable for sharing with stakeholders or storing as a procurement record. Six report types are available — supplier, customer, acquisition, competitor, partner, and self-assessment — each with a different default section configuration.
- risk grade
The A–E letter grade derived from the overall risk score.
A convenience mapping of DRV-055 onto an A–E scale for at-a-glance comparison. A is lowest risk; E is highest. The exact score thresholds are set by the DRV-065 derived test. Use the grade for summary displays and the raw score for detailed comparison.
- risk score
A 0–100 score where higher is worse — used at category and overall level.
Category scores (DRV-056 to DRV-064) and the overall score (DRV-055) are reported on a risk scale: 0 means no identified risk, 100 means maximum risk. The inversion from the test-level health scale happens inside the scoring pipeline, not inside individual tests.
- severity
How much weight a failed test contributes to the category score.
Every test result is tagged with a severity: critical, high, medium, low, or info. When a test fails, its contribution to the category score is multiplied by a severity factor — 17 for critical, 8 for high, 4 for medium, 1 for low, 0 for info. Info-level failures therefore appear in reports but do not affect the numerical score.
- shadow director
A person whose instructions the directors customarily follow.
Not formally appointed, but the board routinely acts on their directions. Shadow directors carry most of the same legal duties as formal directors and can be held liable for misconduct. Often a concern in corporate governance reviews and in understanding true control of a company.
- SIC code
A 5-digit code classifying a company's business activity.
The UK Standard Industrial Classification (SIC 2007) assigns each business activity a 5-digit code. Companies report up to four SIC codes at Companies House. Senserity uses SIC codes to apply sector-appropriate risk tests and to identify which regulatory regimes a company is likely subject to.
- SSIP
Safety Schemes in Procurement — health-and-safety pre-qualification.
SSIP is a mutual recognition umbrella for UK health-and-safety assessment schemes (CHAS, Acclaim, SafeContractor, and many others). A single SSIP-accredited certificate is accepted by all member schemes, reducing duplication in supply-chain compliance. Senserity checks SSIP member-scheme registers directly.
- termination
A director or secretary leaving or being removed from a company.
Officer terminations (resignations or removals) must be notified to Companies House within 14 days. A cluster of terminations at short notice is a governance signal Senserity flags, especially when coupled with other indicators such as late filings or strike-off notices.
- test coverage
The proportion of applicable tests that actually ran for a company.
Not every test applies to every company — some require specific data sources (e.g. audited accounts) or sector context. Test coverage reports how many of the applicable tests had sufficient data to produce a result. Low coverage is a caveat to attach to the category score, not an error.
- topup
Extra credits purchased outside your plan — they never expire.
Topup credits sit alongside your monthly allowance. Monthly credits are consumed first; topups fill the gap. Unlike monthly credits, topup balance rolls over indefinitely — useful for absorbing a burst of enrichment work without upgrading your plan.
- UBO
Ultimate Beneficial Owner.
The natural person at the top of an ownership chain who ultimately owns or controls an entity — typically defined as holding more than 25% of shares or voting rights through any chain of ownership. In the UK, the PSC register is the primary mechanism for identifying UBOs for the purposes of anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance.
- watchlist
Your set of companies that Senserity actively monitors.
The watchlist is the starting point for most Senserity workflows. Adding a company queues it for enrichment and opens it up for risk scoring, alerting, and reporting. Your plan sets a maximum watchlist size; companies beyond that limit can be paused, not deleted.
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