How Old Are Companies When They Fail?

At Cathro & Partners, we provide live access to ASIC insolvency statistics through our website dashboard, Cathro Clarity, enabling stakeholders to track insolvency trends and market movements in near real time.

Insolvency reporting typically focuses on how many companies fail and in which industries. For this Cathro Clarity Insight, we have looked at a different question: how old are companies when they enter external administration?

To answer it, we matched every company entering external administration for the first time between 1 July 2021 and September 2026 – 56,302 companies in total – to its registration date on the ASIC companies register.

The data indicates that the median company is approximately 7 years old at the date of appointment, with the most common age being just 4 years.