Vigil vs Company Watch

What Company Watch does

Company Watch is a financial health analytics service focused on UK and international companies. Its central product is the H-Score — a model for predicting corporate financial distress, developed over decades and used by credit professionals, auditors, accountants, and financial institutions.

The H-Score is calculated from a company's published accounts. It models financial health across multiple dimensions and assigns a score from 0 to 100, with scores below 25 considered high risk. Users can search companies, view their H-Score history, and build portfolios with monitoring.

Company Watch is used primarily by people who need deep financial analysis: accountants assessing a client's counterparty risk, auditors doing going-concern testing, finance directors reviewing a potential acquisition target. The analytical depth is the product.

The H-Score is based on filed accounts, which means it lags real events by months. A company that files accounts in December for a year ending March has nearly nine months between the period end and publication. The score reflects the past more than the present.

What Vigil does

Vigil monitors Companies House and the London Gazette in real time and sends a plain English alert when something happens today. Director resigned. Charge registered. First Gazette Notice published. The alert arrives the same day it happens, not when the annual accounts finally appear.

Vigil doesn't score financial health. It watches for events. If you want to know what a company's balance sheet looked like 18 months ago, Company Watch is the right tool. If you want to know that one of their directors resigned this morning, Vigil sends you that alert by lunchtime.

The Gazette coverage is a specific gap Company Watch doesn't fill. When a company begins voluntary dissolution, Vigil sends the alert the same day the First Gazette Notice appears, with the two-month objection deadline and how to file. Company Watch may surface this eventually through its monitoring, but not with the same directness or speed.

The practical difference

Company Watch is for financial analysis: deep, retrospective, model-based. It answers "how financially healthy is this company based on its accounts?"

Vigil is for operational monitoring: real-time, event-driven. It answers "what happened at this company today?"

Some organisations need both. A credit team might use Company Watch to assess a new counterparty's financial health at onboarding, then Vigil to watch for changes to the companies on their active list.

When to use Company Watch

• You need deep financial analysis from published accounts for credit or audit purposes
• You're an accountant or auditor conducting going-concern assessments
• You need the H-Score model specifically, with its long-run validation and professional credibility
• You're doing M&A due diligence or assessing a potential acquisition

When to use Vigil

• You need real-time alerts when something changes at companies on your watchlist
• You want London Gazette dissolution notices with the creditor objection deadline
• You're a credit controller, account manager, or small business owner monitoring a list of counterparties
• You need self-serve monthly pricing with no contract or sales call