MSE News: Public 'backs portable bank account numbers'

jonesMUFCforever

I'll make this short - IMO it will not work.

After saying that I understand that LTSB customers being transferred under the Verde project to the CO-OP will be keeping their existing account numbers.

innovate

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

I'll make this short - IMO it will not work.

After saying that I understand that LTSB customers being transferred under the Verde project to the CO-OP will be keeping their existing account numbers.

Isn't that easy to achieve because the branches that get transferred are the ex-TSB ones, and all had their own, separate, range of sort codes and account numbers to start with, anyway?

jonesMUFCforever

........But not all TSB branches are being sold so the 77 sort code will still exist in Lloyds and now in CO-OP.

innovate

I wouldn't be surprised (but don't know) if the transferred branches had unique sorts codes/account number ranges. Or, to put it another way, I would be very surprised if they transferred some, but not all of the accounts within a given sort code.

olly300

jonesMUFCforever wrote: »

........But not all TSB branches are being sold so the 77 sort code will still exist in Lloyds and now in CO-OP.

That's not too much of a problem.

The full sort-code will distinguish whether it's a Lloyds branch or a Co-op branch, and therefore who processes the transactions.

At the moment there are smaller building societies who use larger banks payments systems and only the full 6 figure sort-code indicates that they are that building society not that actual bank.

This sort of thing has been going on for years as when I worked in a bank we used to have massive books of sort-codes and while most of the financial institutions could be identified through the first 2 digits, some of the them you needed 4 digits or all 6 digits to distinguish which financial institution it actually was.

Also if the account number was portable then customer would likely be given another set of numbers for payments which would be more complicated - making the entire thing pointless.

Using the mobile porting number example - every time I port my number to T-mobile my voicemail box number is different from my actual phone number due to how they do their porting. This means in effect I'm using two mobile phone numbers.

tagq2

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Most companies will also quite gladly tell you when a switch will be effective from. It's not really rocket science.

And in a hypothetical perfect world where each telephone rep accurately and clearly explains each payee's systems and every user is able and willing to competently manage this for the dozen or more regular payments, everyone would manually switch each of his DD/SOs with zero problems.

This is a classic case of geek error, where someone familiar with a particular field finds a process so simple that he feels "only an idiot" wouldn't be willing and able to carry it through - despite all the evidence that the average person does not do so. In my grunt days, when I was firewalled from the customer, I sometimes thought like that. These days I prefer to think of the customer as someone who pays me in return for a service well provided. My customers want and deserve results, not excuses or reasons why he should do my job.

The difference is a given telephone number can route to any line, regardless of the actual area code, as this is set by the routing functions of the telephone system.

Only because the "routing functions" have been updated to allow this. There was once a time when it would have been a right pain for 01 23456 to refer to Westminster and 01 23457 to refer to Portree, Isle of Skye. One of my father's first jobs was working at Telefonica, starting in the early '50s... he's on a 'plane now, otherwise I'd prod him for a reminder of technical detail!

How precisely is having two account numbers for the same account more intuitive or less confusing than, as it is now, every account having a single combination of sort code and account number?

The same way it's perfectly intuitive for you to have [EMAIL="myname@mycompany.com"]myname@mycompany.com[/EMAIL] despite the likely username and/or MX aliasing. This address might forward to a work mailbox and perhaps to a home/mobile mailbox when you're elsewhere. It might forward to a colleague when you're on holiday. And so forth. You can understand it and achieve something interesting, or not worry about it and it'll all still work.

For example, if I were going to be power-user about it, I'd have several virtual account numbers, corresponding perhaps to high priority expenses, miscellaneous personal expenses, family expenses, company-I'm-not-sure-I-trust, &c. I'd be able to move these around in separate chunks just by changing the redirection - so when I get my new account I'd move the priority virtual account last of all, once I'm entirely satisfied with my new bank. If a company is being abusive, I shut down that account number without affecting every payment arrangement.

Will anything this powerful ever be implemented? Unlikely. Is it technically feasible and useful? Of course. I'd prefer that it were implemented for IBANs and that we in general stopped using country-specific account formats (whatever happened to the single market of capital?), but there you go...

A "lookup on source" adds to overhead for anyone using BACS or DDs, increasing costs, even if such a thing is technically possible without all banks having to subscribe to an entire register of account numbers for different people.

The overhead of a single extra lookup on a mainly read-only database of 14-digit mappings when you're already going through a central infrastructure (bacs/chaps) is not burdensome.

You would be surprised. There is a LOT of human involvement in cheque clearing. It is not anywhere near as automated as you may think.

There is, obviously, no manual lookup of account information. Regardless, I don't see why cheques have to be part of a portable account number scheme, since chequebooks are clearly issued on a specific bank&account.

Direct Debits and standing orders can be bulk switched, and portable account numbers will do nothing to assist with this process.

Except that the bulk switching process requires the cooperation of originators - and there's the rub.

jamesd

innovate wrote: »

I don't get it - what is the benefit of having the same bank account number for life?

I'm not greatly keen on one number for life. More like one number per merchant and employer, same as I give every merchant a different email address. I've used 518 email addresses for that in the last dozen or so years. If one gets abused I just turn it off.

innovate wrote: »

And how would I retain the same number if I decide to have more than one current account (e.g. to protect myself from NatWest/RBS-style IT meltdowns)?

To protect from that, switch where the portable number redirects to. Now your pay and DDs are going to different accounts, dodging the problem. And after the lookup part, the underlying transaction can use the existing systems.

innovate wrote: »

If the whole issue is about moving Direct Debits - - - there are other, much simpler and more cost-effective, solutions to this issue. The current numbering system is entrenched in a highly complex set of IT systems. The cost of implementing number portability would most likely be quite prohibitive, both in terms of money and duration.

You mean that the UK banks can't do something that even middle range web sites do routinely as part of their implementation?

innovate wrote: »

Surely we have many lot more pressing and useful improvements to implement (e.g. showing current and historical interest rates for all accounts).

Improving competition between banks matters. Making it easy to move transactions around is part of doing that.

JuicyJesus

jamesd wrote: »

You mean that the UK banks can't do something that even middle range web sites do routinely as part of their implementation?

I'm sure they *could*. The problem is that there is !!!!!! all reason for them to do so and a long list of reasons for them not to do so, top of the list being that it would require reengineering the entire banking system from the ground up, for absolutely no benefit to the vast majority of people and indeed quite a lot of detriment, as outlined in my posts above.

All told it sounds like a lot of peoples' thought processes are "banks could potentially do this; they are not doing it; I don't like banks; they must do this." Even though the idea doesn't make much coherent sense, less so when you actually think about what most people want from their bank accounts.

And of course it's easy for "middle range web sites" to do it, because they don't have to deal with millions, if not billions of already extant accounts serving millions of customers processing vital transactions necessary for the safe working of our economy, or the processes that are already deeply wedded to the existence of systems and standards going back decades.

jamesd

JuicyJesus wrote: »

I'm sure they *could*. The problem is that there is !!!!!! all reason for them to do so and a long list of reasons for them not to do so, top of the list being that it would require reengineering the entire banking system from the ground up

Doing a lookup on a specific range of BIC and IBAN combinations or a specific range of sort codes and account numbers doesn't really take reengineering the entire banking system.

JuicyJesus wrote: »

for absolutely no benefit to the vast majority of people

Increased banking competition is something that is likely to help all bank account users. Being able to trivially move transactions around is part of increasing that competition.

JuicyJesus wrote: »

And of course it's easy for "middle range web sites" to do it, because they don't have to deal with millions, if not billions of already extant accounts serving millions of customers processing vital transactions necessary for the safe working of our economy, or the processes that are already deeply wedded to the existence of systems and standards going back decades.

You perhaps don't know that every ad view gets tracked these days along with huge numbers of shopping basket entries and such, all of which involve tracking money that will eventually move around the system. Places like Google (shopping, payments), Amazon (similar), Ebay/Paypal (similar) are processing numbers of transactions that make the UK banking system look small to tiny.

Millions to billions of existing accounts are routinely handled in the middle to large scale web businesses.

It's not that hard to build a redirection infrastructure that can handle a few billion transactions per day. It does take some work to do it and to integrate it with other systems, particularly while meeting the security constraints.

antrobus

pmduk wrote: »

the porting of mobile phone numbers is actually very useful and I suspect has increased competition in that industry. I doubt the same would be true in banking, although there would be huge costs involved and the process would probably involve many existing customers having to change their number.

It would probably involve every customer having to change their number. Bank account numbers aren't (usually) random numbers - banks normally adopt an algorithm that generates account numbers in order to ensure (if nothing else) that if there is an account no 11553678 there isn't an account no 11553687. To make numbers portable, you'd need an industry standard algorithm, a central register, and very likely more numbers. You'd probably have to reconfigure every single accounting system in the UK.

So it would be a bit like adopting the Euro. A case of spending billions for no benefit whatsoever.