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# Monitor bankruptcies

> Learn how to monitor bankruptcies for subscribed businesses on Middesk's Identity Platform.

This guide describes how to monitor a business for new bankruptcy filings with subscribed businesses on Middesk's Identity Platform.

Bankruptcy Monitoring helps you stay informed when a monitored business enters bankruptcy.
When a new bankruptcy is detected, Middesk updates the business record and sends a `bankruptcy.created` webhook event.

> **Info**
>
> Middesk offers Bankruptcy Monitoring when a business has SOS registrations. If Middesk can’t tie a business to registrations, the bankruptcy monitor may be unavailable for that business.

## Prerequisites

Before you begin:

* Ensure that you can authenticate against the Middesk API, create businesses, and ingest Middesk results with [webhooks](../quickstart)

## Learn the monitoring lifecycle

Here's the typical lifecycle of monitoring for bankruptcies:

1. A business gets created with the [POST /businesses endpoint](/api-reference/business-verification/businesses/create-a-business).

2) The business is subscribed to Bankruptcy monitoring (using the `bankruptcy` event type).
3) Middesk monitors the business for new bankruptcy filings.
4) Middesk sends a webhook event to registered webhook endpoint(s) when it detects a new bankruptcy (`bankruptcy.created`).
5) The client application ingests and evaluates the change in the business record.

For a full list of webhook events, see [Webhook events](../monitor-activity/events). For details on the bankruptcy data model, see the [Bankruptcy object](/reference/bankruptcy).

## Monitor bankruptcies

#### Submit a business

Start by [submitting a business for verification](/api-reference/business-verification/businesses/create-a-business).

> **Note**
>
> Bankruptcy monitoring works best when Middesk can identify SOS registrations for the business.

#### Subscribe a business

You can enable monitoring on Middesk businesses using four different strategies.

#### With an automatic monitoring subscription

Automatically subscribe all businesses when a business verification order completes.

#### With a policy action

[Policies](/use-rulesets-policies) provide a rule-based system for automation within the Middesk platform. Use a custom policy action to subscribe businesses when certain conditions are met.

![Policies for monitoring](/_fern-img/39a734314ddf42bec89970c541494d5a2ed34f67c836a1cc57b21a72c7ee52f5.webp)

#### With the API

Use the [POST /monitor API](/api-reference/business-verification/monitoring/create-a-monitor-for-a-business) to create, update, and delete business monitors for fine-grained control within your application.

```json
{
  "event_types": ["bankruptcy"]
}
```

#### With the Dashboard

Manually enable monitoring on a business with a completed business verification order on the **Monitoring** tab of the Middesk [Dashboard](https://app.middesk.com/).

> **Get a demo**
>
> Contact your account manager or [contact sales](https://www.middesk.com/contact-sales) to inquire about access.