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Herran Finance – another fake bank at Companies House

Companies HouseFraud
3 September 2025

7 Comments

Every Monday morning, we publish an updated list of every PLC in the UK that has failed to file its accounts on time.

Sometimes a company is on the list because of a Companies House delay/error. More often, it’s because the company is troubled, bust, or incompetent. And occasionally it reveals an active fraud.

Despite the real progress made by Companies House, the UK company register remains stuffed full of fraudulent companies.

Here’s a quick example showing how easy it is to find them.

Herran Finance’s fake accounts

Clicking through the list, there’s an interesting sounding company: Herran Finance PLC.

Table of company registrations dated 30 June 2023, highlighting Herran Finance PLC: NECTON DEVELOPMENT GROUP PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 TACTIC INVEST PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 AVATAR FINANCE PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 NEXTON FINTECH PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 ELEXSYS ENERGY PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 SILVER BEAR RESOURCES PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794 HERRAN FINANCE PLC | 2023-06-30 | 794

One look at its accounts tells us it’s a fraud:

Balance Sheet as at 31 December 2021 for Herran Finance PLC: HERRAN FINANCE PLC Registered Number 12370122 Balance Sheet as at 31 December 2021 2021 £ | 2020 £ Called up share capital not paid | 0.00 | 0.00 Current assets Cash at bank and in hand | 59,892,205.00 | 59,892,205.00 Net assets | 59,892,205.00 | 59,892,205.00 Issued share capital 59892205 Ordinary Shares of £1.00 each | 59,892,205.00 | 59,892,205.00 Total Shareholder funds | 59,892,205.00 | 59,892,205.00 STATEMENTS a. For the year ending 31 December 2021 the company was entitled to exemption under section 480 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to dormant companies. b. The members have not required the company to obtain an audit in accordance with section 476 of the Companies Act 2006. c. The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Act with respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts. d. These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies regime. Approved by the Board on 12 August 2022 And signed on their behalf by: ADRIAN CROITORU, Director

We are supposed to believe that the company had £59,892,205 cash in 2020 and exactly the same in 2021. It made no interest or other return, and had no expenses of any kind, so filed as dormant. This is impossible. The accounts are faked.

Knowingly filing false documents with Companies House is a criminal offence.

The names listed as directors and shareholders of Herran Finance could be the actual fraudsters, but more likely they are fake names, or names of real people whose identities were stolen. One of those names, Adrian Croitoru, is listed as director of five other active companies which all also look fraudulent.

Herran Finance’s fake website

Herran Finance has a superficially plausible website at https://herran.co.uk/:

Homepage banner from the Herran website: Herran Business Banking ˅ Personal Banking ˅ Lending Services ˅ Learn ˅ About Us ˅ Online Banking Log In PREMIER Business Banking: Your Trusted Partner Delivering personalization, agility and entrepreneurship in banking Talk to a Business Lender Talk to a Deposit Specialist 100% Fully Insured Deposits Innovative Solutions Trusted Advisor & Partner

There are no contact details, no privacy policy, no name of the legal entity, and none of the details one expects on a genuine bank website. Half the links are dead, returning straight back to the homepage. (Please be cautious; we recommend against visiting the website unless you are very confident in your browser security setup.)

The website says Herran Finance is regulated and deposits are fully protected by the FDIC, the US deposit protection scheme. But there’s no Herran Finance authorised by the FCA in the UK or covered by the FDIC.

And why does a bank incorporated in the UK, and with a .co.uk domain, provide US dollar accounts and say it’s regulated in the US?

Web page from herran.co.uk showing personal checking account options: herran.co.uk/personal/personal-checking-account/index.html Herran Business Banking | Personal Banking | Lending Services | Learn | About Us | Online Banking Log In Explore Our Personal Checking Options | Basic Checking | Prestige Checking | Executive Elite Checking Minimum Balance | $500 | $20,000* min combined relationship balance (Includes consumer deposit accounts and business accounts) | $250,000* min combined relationship balance (Includes consumer deposit accounts and business accounts) Monthly Service Fee | $5 monthly maintenance fee when balance falls below $500. | $20.00 monthly maintenance fee when combined balances fall below $20,000 | $50.00 monthly maintenance fee when combined balances fall below $250,000 Opening Deposit | $10.00 | $10.00 | $10.00 Transactions at Non-Herran Finance ATMs | $3.00 | [tick] | [tick] Interest | No | Yes | Yes 18/65 | Minimum balance requirement waived if the primary owner of this account is either under 18 or over 65. | — | — Benefits | — | [tick] Domestic Outgoing Wire Transfers with no fee; [tick] Up to $15.00 refunded monthly on ATM Surcharge Fees imposed by Non-Herran Finance ATM owners; [tick] No Fee for Money Orders and Treasurer’s Checks; [tick] No Fee for for standard check re-orders | [tick] Domestic Outgoing Wire Transfers with no fee; [tick] No fee to purchase Money Orders or Treasurer's Checks; [tick] Waived Stop Payment fee(s); [tick] Free check reorders; [tick] No International Card Transaction Fee(s); [tick] Unlimited rebates on ATM Surcharge Fees imposed by Non-Herran Finance ATM owners; [tick] Additional perks offered by MasterCard with World Debit Card. | | *business account balances considered for owner of business only | *business account balances considered for owner of business only

Because the website is a clone of the (real and legitimate) US bank BankProv. The sites look almost identical, and the HTML for Herran Finance shows that they just copied BankProv’s website using the HTTrack tool:

HTML source code for the Herran Finance website displayed in a text editor: Line wrap 1 <!DOCTYPE html> 2 3 <html class="no-js" lang="en-US"> 4 <!-- Mirrored from bankprov.com/ by HTTrack Website Copier/3.x [XR&CO'2014], Mon, 19 May 2025 10:39:21 GMT --> 5 <!-- Added by HTTrack --> 6 <meta content="text/html;charset=utf-8" http-equiv="content-type"/><!-- /Added by HTTrack --> 7 <head> 8 <meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" name="viewport"/> 9 <meta content="index, follow, max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1" name="robots"/> 10 <style></style> 11 <link href="feed/index.html" rel="alternate" title="Herran Finance Feed" type="application/rss+xml"/> 12 <!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https://yoast.com/wordpress/plugins/seo/ --> 13 <title>Herran Finance | Future-Ready Banking Solutions for Businesses</title> 14 <link as="font" crossorigin="" data-rocket-preload="" href="../fonts.gstatic.com/s/comfortaa/v45/1Ptsg8LJRfWJmhDAuUs4TYFq.woff2" rel="preload"/> 15 <link as="font" crossorigin="" data-rocket-preload="" href="wp-content/themes/bankprov/assets/fonts/3AFBF1_0_0.woff2" rel="preload"/> 16 <style id="wpr-usedcss">” class=”wp-image-22945″ srcset=”https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-01-at-17.13.55-2000×431.png 2000w, https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-01-at-17.13.55-768×166.png 768w, https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-01-at-17.13.55-1536×331.png 1536w, https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-01-at-17.13.55-2048×442.png 2048w, https://taxpolicy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-01-at-17.13.55-640×138.png 640w” sizes=”auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px”></figure> <p class=What’s the scam? It could be anything: phishing, money laundering, investor fraud, advance fee fraud, or even immigration fraud. The company was incorporated back in 2019, but the domain was acquired in May 2025 – so the scam (whatever it is) may be ongoing.

The policy failure

It’s absurdly easy to incorporate a company with an enormous fake share capital and then file dormant accounts – but it shouldn’t be. And large numbers of such companies remain registered.

Companies House should be using its new powers to stop this. It could create a simple automated filter for companies filing dormant accounts with an unchanging large cash balance in its accounts – there’s really no explanation for this other than fraud. The most recent accounts could then be automatically withdrawn, penalties automatically issued for the failure to file correct accounts, and an automated letter sent requiring evidence of the supposedly fully-paid share capital. If the penalties aren’t paid, or the evidence isn’t provided, the company can then be struck off.

A more ambitious approach would be for Companies House to automatically flag and then manually review all incorporations and capital-raisings where shares are being issued for (say) over £10m (ignoring listed companies). These are a vanishingly small percentage of the total number of companies and filings.

Measures of this kind would help stop fraudsters using Companies House to give fake companies financial credibility.

Footnotes

  1. One director, Adrian Croitoru, gives a correspondence address which is a residential property in St. Neots, Cambridgeshire. His name is not on the deeds of that house; very possibly the fraudsters are using an innocent person’s details. ↩︎

  2. i.e. obtaining a work visa on the strength of employment with a company that doesn’t exist. ↩︎

Further reading

Certificate of Incorporation from Companies House for UBS GROUP AG LTD dated 28 February 2023: CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF A PRIVATE LIMITED COMPANY Company Number 14695023 The Registrar of Companies for England and Wales, hereby certifies that UBS GROUP AG LTD is this day incorporated under the Companies Act 2006 as a private company, that the company is limited by shares, and the situation of its registered office is in England and Wales Given at Companies House, Cardiff, on 28th February 2023

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7 responses to “Herran Finance – another fake bank at Companies House”

  1. S Parish avatar
    S Parish

    Well done for highlighting these companies. It is absurd that members of the public are bringing these to the attention of the authorities seemingly before they shut them down.

    One solution would be to change the audit thresholds so that a company required an audit if its assets were above a certain level, regardless of whether it was dormant. That would sort a lot of these schemes out and probably wouldn’t inconvenience any genuine business.

    Reply
  2. Harry Ziman avatar
    Harry Ziman

    One thought would be to look up the owner of the domain herran.co.uk as part of the background searches and see if there is any connection between them where the same person is involved in more than one such company.

    Reply
  3. Steve avatar
    Steve

    It’s an example of the paucity of ambition and technical ability / training within the public sector generally.

    Reply
  4. Jane S avatar
    Jane S

    The BBC radio podcast series “Scam Secrets” makes for interesting listening on the lengths fraudsters go to. I think it was in the romance episode that a fake bank website was used in a very psychologically clever way to getsomeone to give money to a fraudster. It’s good that Companies House has been empowered to take steps to combat fraud but there’s clearly a lot more needed. On the same podcast there’s an episode largely about fraudulent companies & the statistics are staggering. Well done to Dan in continuing to highlight this topic.

    Reply
  5. Peter Fishwick avatar
    Peter Fishwick

    The identification of these fake companies could easily be automated, with an email sent to Companies House with a list of those companies.

    Reply
  6. Rob Simpson avatar
    Rob Simpson

    I’ve not set up a company in a while, but recall HMRC send a letter to the registered office about corporation tax arrangements. If this letter was not responded to why has a public warning not been automatically added to the CH entry (in big red letters)? For the average person googling the company the register entry just gives weight to what superficially looks legit (it was link #2, bumped one down by the link to this page). There just seems a disconnect between different agencies. So simple to remedy most of these issues. Also I doubt they have a UK bank account, another way to filter out scammers.

    Reply
  7. Simon Haslam avatar
    Simon Haslam

    Perhaps you should offer to do this for Companies House – for a suitable fee of course!

    Reply

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