21280 – Business Insolvency

Business Insolvency (21280) measures the rate at which Australian companies enter external administration or have a controller appointed for the first time, standardised against the node’s recent history. It combines two components, Construction Insolvency (21281) and Insolvency Outside Construction (21282), each carrying half of the node’s weight, so construction, the industry with the largest single share of company insolvencies, is read separately from the rest of the economy.

Business Insolvency is a contributing input to the Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™) (21200), carrying a weighting of 0.10.

The node records business failures that have already happened; it is a lagging reading of business-sector stress, not a forecast. It does not measure household financial stress, which is the domain of Household Finance & Spending (21240). Construction insolvency also enters Construction Costs & Supply Chain (21260), where it is read as one sign of supply-chain pressure alongside producer prices and dwelling approvals.

Primary metric: Node Composite Z-Score (Z₂₁₂₈₀)

Metric typology: equal-weighted two-component composite of quarterly company insolvency counts.

Each component is independently certified and has its own page.

Both components count companies entering external administration or having a controller appointed for the first time, from ASIC’s insolvency statistics: its current series from July 2021 and its historical series for July 2013 to June 2021, which agree within three companies a month where they overlap. Monthly counts are summed to calendar quarters. ASIC counts individual companies, not corporate groups. Tier-1 statutory regulator source; no commercial data provider dependency exists within this node.

The current certified reading of Business Insolvency (21280) is for the June quarter 2026. The chart shows the composite for every quarter from September 2013, with both components measured against the same baseline.

Each component is shown at its own latest certified quarter, on one shared scale (−3σ to +3σ) so they can be compared directly. The dashed rule marks the July 2021 change in ASIC industry coding; quarters before it are not ranked.

At +0.9921σ (Q2 2026), companies are entering external administration at a rate about one standard deviation above the September 2021 to December 2025 baseline. Position. 78.9, ranked against 20 quarters on the current industry coding; 15 of the other 19 quarters since September 2021 read below the current quarter.

The two components sit close together, construction at +1.0300σ and the rest of the economy at +0.9543σ, so the elevated reading is broad-based rather than confined to building. The composite has read above its baseline average in every quarter from March 2024, after sitting well below it through 2021 and early 2022; it eased to +0.5899σ in the March quarter 2026 before rising again in June.

Business Insolvency (21280) should not be read as a household-stress signal, which is the role of Household Finance & Spending (21240), or as a construction-cost signal, which is the domain of Construction Costs & Supply Chain (21260).

The other eight components of Economic Factors (APN Aggregate Macro-Volatility Index™) (21200).