Guardian: The Campaign for Bank Account Number Portability

[Lightning]

Interesting article in the Guardian here about the campaign for IBAN portability.

Which? is also holding a meeting at the House of Commons with the Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom and representatives of all the major high street banks, where they will put the case for portable account numbers.

The organisation argues that if regulation of the banking sector followed a similar model to the telecommunications industry, where it is commonplace for people to keep their phone numbers when they change networks, people would make the change in bank accounts as frequently as they do their mobile providers.

This appears to be backed by the survey that found 76% of people believed that the introduction of portable account numbers would make the process of changing banks easier.

"Customers are fed up of excuses from their banks. What they want is a massive shakeup of how banks work. Full bank account portability fits the bill perfectly. And it wouldn't just be customers who'd be better off," she said.

"At one stroke, huge barriers to entry for new banks would be torn down. Regulators would instantaneously be able to move deposits out of a failing bank, to prevent a run like we saw with Northern Rock. And the current high levels of bank losses due to fraud would be significantly reduced."

Obviously, an IBAN gives the routing information for a payment. A bit like the way a mobile phone number used to give routing information for calls.

However, this is not necessary if a server sits in between the IBAN and the destination and provides routing information.

I have posted here before calling for bank account number portability and I am delighted to see that a campaign has started in the UK for this to occur. Hopefully, something similar will happen here.

IBAN portability would really encourage the switching of bank accounts to occur.

Part-IBAN portability might be an intermediate solution where anything beyond the 2 character country code is portable.