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Using Chase as donor/dummy accounts for Current Account Switching
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Losing customers is not the same as people creating a second account and switching it away while maintaining the original account - that is still 1 customer for the purposes of total account numbers
Sam Vimes' Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness:
People are rich because they spend less money. A poor man buys $10 boots that last a season or two before he's walking in wet shoes and has to buy another pair. A rich man buys $50 boots that are made better and give him 10 years of dry feet. The poor man has spent $100 over those 10 years and still has wet feet.
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Looks to me like it's just a count of account switches.
"This table presents the number of full account switches* completing in the reporting period."
https://www.wearepay.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/CASS-Dashboard-Q4-2025.pdf
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Would those stats take account of 'secondary' (linked) accounts being closed, or would they only cover the primary Chase account being closed?
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I think they just count the number of switches and primary, secondary or tertiary doesn't come into it.
The table in the report is confusing because its title states, "customers" but when you look at the definition it simply states the number of full account switches. Probably an assumption that people usually only have one current account.
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I suspect the same, it's very common to see the CASS advertising how many millions have switched and I suspect you could knock the number down by a lot if you looked only at the number of people who switched. MSE people doing 5-10 switches would be 5-10 for CASS but only 1 person in reality so the numbers aren't reliable.
Sam Vimes' Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness:
People are rich because they spend less money. A poor man buys $10 boots that last a season or two before he's walking in wet shoes and has to buy another pair. A rich man buys $50 boots that are made better and give him 10 years of dry feet. The poor man has spent $100 over those 10 years and still has wet feet.
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The CASS stats are a complete joke. A lot of people have never switched, and have no interest in doing so. Even serial switchers, like me, don't usually switch our main account; we just open dummy ones just to switch and get a bonus.
The number of "genuine" switchers, i.e. people who really want to change their bank account, must be quite small.
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Do you have evidence to back this up or is this just your opinion based upon the experiences of people in MSE?
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According to Which? "Since launching in 2013, CASS has handled more than 12.4m switches."
This is only a small minority of the population. Lloyds alone has 28 million customers:
https://www.lloydsbank.com/business/resource-centre/insight/are-uk-customers-who-you-think-they-are.html#:~:text=Helping%20companies%20grow&text=With%2028%20million%20customers%2C%20Lloyds,debit%20cards%20and%20credit%20cards.Barclays has 20 million UK customers:
Add on the number of customers from all the other banks, and arithmetic alone tells you that most customers haven't switched their accounts.
See also this report:
https://fleishmanhillard.co.uk/2023/02/what-the-latest-current-account-switching-service-figures-tell-us/"the big picture is that current account switching has failed to take off. Around 2% of people switch their current accounts each year – roughly the same percentage as in 2015. By contrast, 13% switch their broadband and 16% their mobile provider."
"So why do so few people move? PayUK’s research suggests that the key barriers are people seeing no reason to change (66%); being happy with their current provider (66%); and believing that there’s no difference between accounts (60%)."
As to my comment that the number of "genuine" switchers must be quite small, I quote again from the above report:
"PayUK research from 2022 shows that cash rewards were the biggest driver of switching, with 76% of consumers giving it as their reason for moving."Genuine switchers, by which I mean those who are unhappy with their bank and want to change, would do so anyway; they wouldn't need a bribe to do it.
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I'm looking to do a switch to Santander at some point, and note that they require 2 household bill direct debits.
Most of my bills are paid from a joint Monzo account that I share with my partner (which I don't want to switch),but I do have 2 other direct debits in my sole Barclays account which i could use. One is with three mobile (paid monthly), but the other (garden waste collection) is only paid once a year in September.
If I were to set them up from my Chase account to switch to Santander, would the garden waste direct debit be active shortly after it's set up, or would it only become active once a payment has been taken in September?
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Earning cashback for Santander Edge current account | Santander UK https://share.google/z8NTLkZmqynLnQc6b
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