Bank statements for mortgage

tillytiger

Out of curiosity why do banks ask for copies of statements? surely they can access that sort of information the same way they seem to know everything else about us??

MarkyMarkD

If you bank with a different bank, then they can only see very limited information, basically whether you've been in default or over your overdraft limit at any point recently.

And even that information isn't filed by all banks as they don't/didn't want their competitors to benefit from it.

A bank statement is far more useful - it enables the lender to check that stated income matches what is banked; it enables the lender to see whether there are regular payments out which haven't been mentioned; it enables the lender to check whether the account is constantly incurring charges because the potential borrower is running their finances incompetently.

All of these are useful in making an informed lending decision.

tillytiger

Thanks. That makes sense, but I always thought that sort of info was readily available to the banks. Glad to hear its not!!