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.

Age at Appointment – Concentrated in Years Three to Ten

Based on data from FY22 to FY27 year-to-date (YTD), more than half of all companies entering external administration (54%) were between 3 and 10 years old at the date of appointment. This group splits evenly between companies aged 3 to 6 years (27%) and 6 to 10 years (27%):¹

Looking at each individual year of age at the date of appointment:

• Year one is quiet: only ~640 companies failed before their first birthday
• Then pressure builds fast: ~2,700 failed at age 1 and ~4,440 at age 2
• The peak is age 4: ~5,000 companies failed at each of ages 3, 4 and 5, topping out at 5,240 at age 4
• A long tail: numbers fall steadily from age 6, and only ~9% of companies were 20 years or older

The low number of first-year appointments does not necessarily indicate lower risk for new companies. Rather, the data suggests that financial pressure takes time to build, with liabilities – including tax debts – typically accumulating over the first two to five years of trading before an appointment occurs.

Trends Over Time – A Consistent Profile at Higher Volumes

Corporate appointments have almost tripled since FY22, from 4,912 to 14,153 in FY26. Despite this, the age profile of companies entering external administration has remained relatively stable:²

Across each full financial year:

• Steady core: companies aged 3 to 10 made up 53% to 55% of appointments every year
  • Edging older: the 3 to 6 share slipped from 29.2% in FY22 to 26.2% in FY26, while the 6 to 10 share rose from 24.8% to 27.4%
• Median holding firm: the median age has held at 6 to 7 years
• Young companies comprise a smaller slice: the share under 3 years old eased from 14.8% in FY22 to 13.5% in FY26

This indicates that the increase in insolvency activity since FY22 has been broad-based across company ages, rather than driven by a particular cohort of new or long-established businesses.

Industry Trends – Hospitality Younger, Manufacturing Older

Cathro Clarity data also allows for industry-level analysis. While the overall pattern holds across all industries, the timing of failure varies. The chart below shows the share of each industry’s companies entering external administration at each age:³

At an industry level:

• Hospitality fails youngest: Accommodation & Food Services has a median age of just 5, failures peak at ages 3 and 4 (~11.5% each), and only 3.7% are 20 years or older
•  Admin and transport close behind: 19.8% of Administrative & Support Services failures and 17.2% of Transport, Postal & Warehousing failures are under 3 years old
• Construction sets the benchmark: the largest contributor (14,793 companies) tracks the all-industries curve almost exactly, with a median age of 7
• Manufacturing fails oldest: a median age of 9, and more than one in five failing manufacturers (21.6%) had traded for 20 years or more
• Agriculture has the same long tail: 17.7% of Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing failures were 20 years or older

The data suggests that sectors with lower barriers to entry and tighter margins tend to see failures earlier in a company’s life, while capital-intensive sectors are more likely to see established businesses enter external administration.

Appointment Types – Creditor-Driven Processes Reach Younger Companies

The age profile also varies by appointment type:⁴

Across appointment types:

• Court Liquidations skew younger: 17.0% involve companies under 3 years old, against 13.0% for CVLs, with creditors such as the ATO typically initiating them
• Receiverships are youngest of all: approximately one in four involves a company under 3 years old, and the median age is just 5
• SBR is for established businesses: only 8.4% involve companies under 3, consistent with eligibility requirements such as up-to-date tax lodgements
• VAs have the oldest tail: 13.1% involve companies aged 20 years or more, the highest of the main appointment types

This indicates that creditor enforcement is reaching companies earlier in their life cycle, while the voluntary restructuring pathways are more commonly used by established businesses.

Interpreting the Data – How Long Companies Remain in External Administration

As at 28 September 2026, 32,072 companies were recorded on the ASIC register as under external administration, with a median age of 10 years – three years older than the median age at appointment.

This gap does not mean that external administrations take three years on average to complete. The register on any given day holds companies at every stage of the process, including liquidations that commenced several years earlier, and those companies continue to age while they remain under external administration.

Tracking each year’s intake of companies to their status on the ASIC register as at 28 September 2026 shows how long companies remain under external administration:⁵

Year on year:

• FY22, four years on: approximately 15% of that year’s intake remain under external administration, while 79% have been deregistered
• Later intakes still working through: 24.4% of FY23 entrants and 33.5% of FY24 entrants remain under external administration
• Restructurings showing results: 15.3% of FY24 entrants and 21.0% of FY25 entrants have returned to registered status, likely reflecting completed SBR plans and DOCAs, together with the retirement of receivers and controllers

Accordingly, a snapshot of the register is weighted towards long-running administrations and older companies, while measuring age at the date of appointment provides a more accurate view of when companies fail.

Conclusion

The insolvency data indicates that corporate failure in Australia is concentrated in a company’s early-to-middle years, with appointment volumes peaking at around four years of age and remaining elevated through to year ten.

This profile has remained consistent despite a near tripling of appointment volumes since FY22, with a modest shift towards companies aged 6 to 10. However, industry and appointment type continue to influence timing, with hospitality, administrative services and transport failing earlier, and manufacturing and agriculture failing later.

Note on the data: this analysis covers companies recorded in ASIC Series 1 (first-time external administration and controller appointments). Members’ voluntary liquidations are not included. For the approximately 22% of companies since removed from the ASIC register, registration dates were estimated from neighbouring ACNs, which ASIC issues in sequence.

To have a look yourself, please check out: Cathro Clarity – Cathro & Partners

Cathro & Partners are experts in providing insolvency and restructuring services that help to create and preserve business value and enable individuals to make a fresh start. The firm specialises in restructuring, turnaround, personal and corporate insolvency, safe harbour, secured enforcement services, government advisory services and pre-lending services. For a confidential discussion on any of the above, please reach out to one of our experts

1. Source: ASIC insolvency statistics, Series 1 (first-time external administration and controller appointments), 1 July 2021 to 13 September 2026, matched to the ASIC companies register. Age is full completed years from registration to appointment; for example, “3 to 6 years” covers companies aged 3, 4 or 5 at the date of appointment ↩︎
2. Source: ASIC insolvency statistics, Series 1, matched to the ASIC companies register. *FY27 YTD covers 1 July to 13 September 2026, and the most recent month is provisional ↩︎
3. Source: ASIC insolvency statistics, Series 1, 1 July 2021 to 13 September 2026, matched to the ASIC companies register. Industry is the ANZSIC division recorded by ASIC. Companies aged over 20 years are not shown. ↩︎
4. Source: ASIC insolvency statistics, Series 1, 1 July 2021 to 13 September 2026, matched to the ASIC companies register. ↩︎
5. Source: ASIC insolvency statistics, Series 1, matched to the ASIC companies register as at 28 September 2026. Each company is counted once, in the year it first entered external administration. Deregistered includes companies removed from the register more than 12 months ago. Companies with strike-off in progress (0.5%) are not shown. *FY27 YTD covers 1 July to 13 September 2026. ↩︎