In this podcast Meg speaks with Ross Maude, Director of Digital at Companies House. They discuss how our registers and data inspire trust and confidence. This is the third podcast in a six part series, each one discussing our strategic goals.    Megan Hayward: Hello and welcome to another podcast episode from Companies House. We have recently launched our new five-year strategy and one of our strategic goals is all about how “our registers inspire trust and confidence” and the use of our data. Data is one of the backbones of Companies House. And today I'm here with Ross Maude, Director of Digital, at Companies House. And today Ross is going to give us a bit of an insight into his work and how that work runs through who we are and what we do. So, hi Ross. How are you?     Ross Maude: Good. Thanks, Megan. Yes, very well.     MH: Starting to feel a little bit festive?    RM: I am. Christmas tree is up. The lights are up. Yes, I'm starting to get there. Almost there, almost at the Christmas period. So, looking forward to a chance of a good break.     MH: Excellent. Not long to go now.     RM: How about you? Are you ready?     MH: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a quiet one this year. So not too much to get ready luckily.     RM: Relying on delivery for most of the presents, but yes.     MH: Yes, definitely. So, I'm going to kick off with my first question. So, being the Director of Digital, what does that mean, first of all to you and to us as an organisation?    RM: So, the strategic question about data and having trusted and valued data that inspires trust and confidence. I think it's really important. Perhaps because I'm a slightly sort of digital person. I think data is super important, how we treat it, how we manage it, how we look after it. But that's a starting internal view. But I think what's more important actually is what the register is, why it exists, and it's always been sort of a, you know, if people are dealing with a legal entity, they can look up the individuals and the history of the entity and they can make investment choices based on you know, who forms the leadership of that organisation and what their history of their account filings look like for example. So, it allows people to understand, you know, what's inside the legal entity they're working with. What it's made up of and that's really really important. And actually, you know, right now this second, we had some figures last year from some of the credit reference agencies. There is something like 1.7 trillion pounds is invested in UK business every year and the credit reference agencies use our data as one of the foundational elements to make those decisions. And so, I suppose that data, if our data is being used to inform that level of investment then you know, it's so important that we have it right and we have it available and we have it in the right format that people can access as easily as possible to make those decisions.     MH: Yeah. So, you touched on the credit reference agencies. Obviously, our register and the data is trusted by a variety of users. Can you give me a bit more of an insight into some of the other groups that might use our register?    RM: So, I think it’s an interesting one. So, the data is used by a huge range of different stakeholders, if I can use that phrase. So, obviously other companies look at each other in the first instance. Individuals, who look, I mean interesting one of their kind of highest hit rates is when a football club has a change of directorship, you know. That drives huge traffic towards our register. People have a look at who it is, what's going on. But, you know, there's more than that. So obviously investors, you know, investing groups would look at the data to make investment decisions. I have kind of touched on that before. It's used by researchers from all different areas to understand what's happening in the economy. It might be used by people like Transparency International Group who would be