Information on De-banking - December 2023

The approximate cost that can currently be directly attributed to the project is £276,563, largely based on estimated staff time.  Please note that this figure includes work undertaken on the report itself as well as work following its publication, where we have been looking at the issues set out in the next steps section of the report.  This includes the work on, for example, Basic Bank Accounts as well as account closures for different customer types, and is therefore not restricted solely to the cost of investigating account closures for reasons of legally expressed political views.

Please also note that, as detailed in Chapter 4 of the ‘UK Payment Accounts: Access and Closure’ report[1] published on 19 September 2023 (please see paragraphs 4.15 to 4.25), there were issues in the data provided by firms, and we have also therefore spent a considerable amount of time attempting to rectify these data quality issues.  These costs are included here.

As explained above, the cost of the project has been largely attributed to staff costs.  In addition, we also incurred a cost of £1361 associated with preparing the report for publication.

Further details of our planned work on the provision of banking services, including asking the largest banks, payments firms and buildings societies for data on the number of account terminations and the reasons for these.  Further details of our planned work relating to this topic are included in our recent response to the Chancellor, which can be read in full here[2].