Australian company insolvency statistics: 28 key facts

How many companies fail

14,722 companies in FY2024-25

ASIC counts a company in its Series 1 statistics the first time it enters external administration or has a controller appointed. On that measure 14,722 companies became insolvent in FY2024-25, up 33.2% on the 11,053 of FY2023-24.¹ It is the highest annual figure in ASIC's current series, which starts in FY2019-20.²

FY2025-26: a plateau, not a recovery

The 2025-26 financial year ended with 14,153 companies (provisional), about 4% fewer than the year before.² The December quarter 2025 was the busiest of the year with 3,856 companies, while the June quarter came in around 8% below a year earlier.³ The first two months of FY2026-27 were mixed: 1,213 companies in July against 1,362 a year earlier, then 1,808 in August against 1,090.² You can follow the monthly figures on our home page.

From the COVID low to today

FY2019-20 saw 7,362 companies enter external administration. With JobKeeper, temporary relief for directors and the ATO holding back on debt collection, that fell to 4,235 in FY2020-21 and 4,912 in FY2021-22.² Once support ended, numbers climbed to 7,942 in FY2022-23 and then almost doubled again over the next two years.

Partly a catch-up after the pandemic

The Reserve Bank has described the surge as partly a catch-up: companies that would normally have failed during the pandemic were kept afloat and failed later instead. In April 2025 it noted that, added up since 2020, insolvencies were still slightly below the pre-pandemic trend, and that there might be more catch-up to come.⁴ By early 2026 the RBA said insolvencies had returned to around their long-run average.⁵

Rate against registered companies

Australia has around 3.7 million registered companies.⁶ Measured against that base, 0.41% entered external administration in the twelve months to June 2025, up from 0.33% the year before. That is high, but not a record: the rate peaked at 0.56% in FY2011-12 and 0.53% in FY2012-13.¹

Fewer than 4% of business closures are insolvencies

The ABS counted 375,331 businesses that stopped trading in 2025-26, an exit rate of 13.8%, against 460,461 new entries. The number of actively trading businesses rose by 3.1% to about 2.8 million.⁷ Set against the roughly 14,000 insolvencies of the same year, fewer than one closure in 25 is a formal insolvency. Most businesses that close simply stop trading, are sold or are deregistered.

Where companies fail

NSW and Victoria lead

In FY2025-26 New South Wales recorded 5,367 insolvencies, Victoria 4,100 and Queensland 2,706. Western Australia followed with 830, South Australia with 652, the ACT with 256, Tasmania with 145 and the Northern Territory with 97.² NSW and Victoria together account for about two thirds of all cases.

What changed from FY2024-25

NSW (down from 5,692) and Victoria (down from 4,242) both eased in FY2025-26, as did Western Australia (down from 929). Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory were flat or slightly up.² CreditorWatch rates Western Sydney as the highest-risk region in the country, with seven of the ten highest-risk suburbs.⁸ Every insolvency notice can be filtered by state in our live list.

Which industries fail

Construction: about one in four

Construction is the largest industry by a wide margin: 3,472 companies in FY2025-26, or 24.5% of the total, after 3,596 in FY2024-25.² The RBA attributes the sharp rise in builder insolvencies from 2023 to higher input costs, shortages of labour and materials, and fixed-price contracts signed before costs rose.⁴ When a builder fails, subcontractors further down the chain are often hit next.

Hospitality fails at three times the average rate

Accommodation and food services was the second largest group with 2,078 companies in FY2025-26 (14.7%), down from 2,476.² Relative to the number of businesses in the industry, CreditorWatch puts hospitality's insolvency rate at around three times the national average.⁸

Services and retail

Behind construction and hospitality came other services (1,384 companies in FY2025-26), retail trade (1,006) and professional, scientific and technical services (993).² Retail was the only one of these to rise on the year before.

How companies fail

Liquidation is the most common outcome

Of the 14,153 companies in FY2025-26, 6,386 went straight into a creditors' voluntary liquidation and 3,144 were wound up by the court. Another 1,435 entered voluntary administration, 1,714 small business restructuring, and 1,444 had a receiver or other controller appointed.² We explain the differences in our guide to types of external administration in Australia.

Small business restructuring usually works

Small business restructuring, available since January 2021, lets a company with debts of up to $1 million propose a plan to creditors while the directors stay in control. In FY2024-25 it accounted for 2,918 first appointments.² ASIC found that of 573 companies that completed a restructuring plan by June 2024, 89.4% were still registered.⁹ According to the RBA, more than 90% of firms that go through restructuring are trading again within three months.⁴

Court liquidations are rising

Court-ordered liquidations rose from 2,762 in FY2024-25 to 3,144 in FY2025-26.² Most follow a creditor's winding up application. On ASIC's published notices website we counted 5,168 winding up applications in FY2025-26 alone.¹⁰

A $4,000 debt is enough to start it

A creditor can serve a statutory demand for any debt of at least $4,000. The minimum was doubled from $2,000 on 1 July 2021.¹¹ If the company neither pays nor applies to set the demand aside within 21 days, it is presumed insolvent and the creditor can apply to have it wound up.

Who fails

Most failed companies are tiny

Liquidators report on every failed company to ASIC. Of the 9,585 initial reports lodged in FY2024-25, 6,101 (64%) concerned companies with fewer than five full-time equivalent staff. Only 14 companies had 200 or more.¹² The RBA puts the share of small businesses (fewer than 20 employees) at more than three quarters of recent insolvencies.⁴

A third have nothing left

In 3,261 reports (34%) the liquidator estimated the company's realisable assets at less than $1. In 58% of reports they were below $10,000.¹² In other words, most companies only reach an external administrator once the money has run out.

Why companies fail

Liquidators can name more than one cause. In FY2024-25 the most common were inadequate cash flow or high cash use (named in 57% of reports), poor strategic management of the business (50%), trading losses (50%), poor financial control including a lack of records (36%) and under-capitalisation (30%).¹² Poor economic conditions were named in only a quarter of reports.

What creditors get back

83% of unsecured creditors get nothing

In 7,978 of the 9,585 liquidators' reports in FY2024-25 (83%), the expected dividend to unsecured creditors was zero cents in the dollar. Only 84 reports expected more than 50 cents.¹² The RBA reports the same pattern: more than 80% of recent insolvencies are estimated to pay unsecured creditors nothing.⁴

Most insolvent companies have no secured lender

More than 70% of insolvent companies have no secured debt at the time they fail.⁴ That makes most of these failures a problem for suppliers, landlords, employees and the tax office rather than for banks, which is one reason the RBA sees little risk to the financial system from them.⁴

Deficiencies of over $1 million in nearly a third of cases

In 2,790 reports (29%) the estimated shortfall between assets and liabilities was more than $1 million. In 370 it exceeded $10 million.¹²

Tax debt and directors

85% owed tax when they failed

In 8,162 of the 9,585 reports (85%), the company owed taxes or other statutory charges when it failed. In 902 cases the amount exceeded $1 million.¹² The RBA notes that insolvency-related tax debt owed by small businesses more than doubled compared with before the pandemic, as the ATO resumed enforcement.⁴

ATO debt is the strongest warning sign

Businesses with more than $100,000 of ATO debt had an insolvency rate of 21.9% over twelve months, around 31 times the national average of 0.7%, according to CreditorWatch. A single trade payment default lifts a business's risk of insolvency in the following year to more than ten times the average.⁸

Insolvent trading alleged in four of five cases

Liquidators reported possible misconduct in 8,749 of 9,585 reports and alleged insolvent trading in 7,799 (81%).¹² Directors who let a company keep incurring debts while insolvent can be held personally liable for those debts.

Notable collapses

Builders and retailers

Porter Davis Homes went into liquidation in March 2023, leaving more than 1,500 homes unfinished in Victoria and 200 properties in Queensland.¹³ Fashion group Mosaic Brands entered voluntary administration in October 2024.¹⁴ In August 2026 the Bathla Group, a Sydney developer, appointed administrators with debts reported in the billions.¹⁵

Regional Express

Regional Express (Rex) entered voluntary administration on 30 July 2024, one of the highest profile aviation collapses in years,. Its administrators later agreed a sale to the US group Air T.¹⁶

Where the data comes from

ASIC insolvency statistics

ASIC publishes three series. Series 1 counts each company once, the first time it enters external administration. Series 2 counts every appointment, so a company that moves from administration into liquidation appears twice. Series 3 summarises the reports liquidators and administrators lodge about each failed company.² Press reports sometimes mix Series 1 and 2, which explains many of the differing figures.

Published notices

Every appointment, meeting and winding up application must be advertised on ASIC's published notices website.¹⁷ InsolvencyRadar reads every notice, links it to the company and the appointed practitioner, and makes it searchable. You can browse the latest insolvencies or look up an appointee in our insolvency practitioner directory.