IBAN definition

[zag]

Can anyone help sort out a problem I am having with payments which are being returned by my bank due to a supposedly problematic IBAN ? I should point out that the money is coming from my employer and they are not entirely clear whether they are paying via IBAN or account/sort code and this may well be the problem.

According to the BOI website here - [broken link removed] - the IBAN is made up of enough distinct elements to identify your account *to them* when a payment is made using the IBAN. The net result is that money should end up in the correct account - a reasonable result for a banking system.

Also according to that site two of the elements of the IBAN are your account number and sort code. My problem is that my IBAN has a different sort code than my statement. This wouldn't be a problem except that my employer appears to be making payments to it and they are bouncing. I have my own theories as to the cause of the problem - i.e. they are extracting the sort code from the IBAN and trying to transfer money that way.

Can anyone in the banking end of things confirm whether the IBAN must contain the correct sort code or whether this is just convention (and obviously a very usefull convention) and any digits can go in there as long as it is meaningful to the receiving bank ?

z

 

[efm]

From my experience all the IBAN's on my accounts have the correct Sort Code (I have accounts in BoI and AIB)

Also see this page for details of the IBAN and how it is generated

 

[euroDilbert]

Just on the off chance - if you were with BOI in College Green - when they closed one branch (where Habitat is now) all accounts were transferred to the other College Green branch which then had 2 sort codes - either of them seemed to work.

 

[zag]

Thanks for the replies.

I was with O'Connell Bridge branch for a while and saw this alright when they merged with O'Connell Street. I'm at a different branch now and it is quite possible that the same thing happened.

I think the IBAN is OK, Bank of Ireland think it is OK, it is only the payer who is insisting that the sort code per the account and the sort code per the IBAN must match.

Having said that, some of the official documentation about IBAN does say this is the case, but then how come Bank of Ireland have happily been giving out potentialy non-compliant IBANS for the last few years . . . I think it is because they are compliant, hence the request for someone in the banking end of things to confirm.

z

 

[Gulliver]

The IBAN standards are managed by ECBS, the European Ctte for Banking standards, and you can find full details on www.ecbs.org.

The sort code and account number are two elements of the IBAN.

In most cases, there is one sort code per branch. However, a bank can choose to have multiple sort codes per branch, or multiple branches per sort code. The important thing is that they should be able to identify the customer account correctly from the combination of account number and sort code.

One bank has adopted a standard whereby its account numbers are unique - it is only necessary to quote the account number (8 digits) to identify the account. Another has adopted a standard whereby it regards the sort-code and account number combination (14 digits in total) as the account number. I do not know the standards of all banks in this respect.

Where a bank amalgamates 2 branches, it may (a) operate as if these were two separate branches under one roof, with all customers retaining their account numbers and sort codes or (b) Retain the account number but change the sort code of the lesser branch's customers or (c) retain both sort codes, so that the customer has the option of retaining or changing his account number. The latter happened when my branch (BOI 34 College Green (now Habitat) was amalgamated with the College Green branch across the road. The result is that I have two valid sort-codes, but I have only one valid IBAN - that is the one printed on the top of my statement, and it matches the sort-code and account number on the statement.

To summarise, the sort-code and account number shown on your statement should match the account number and sort-code embedded in your IBAN. That is the one you should always use. If they differ on the statement, then the bank has made a mistake, and should be asked to correct it.