MSE News: Martin Lewis: 'Stop people on Universal Credit being blocked from switching bank'

MSE_Abby

Millions of people on Universal Credit face a complicated and bureaucratic bank-switching process that could prevent them accessing accounts and deals, MoneySavingExpert.com (MSE) founder Martin Lewis has told the pensions secretary in a letter sent on Friday 12 December. Martin has urged the Government to look into a range of issues after hearing from many MoneySavers who have struggled with the process...

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'Martin Lewis writes to pension secretary: 'Stop people on Universal Credit being blocked from switching bank''

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born_again

Really???

No need to  contact UC etc, as part of the CASS is to inform companies of the change of bank details.
Payment goes to old bank acc, gets transferred to new account & message sent to sender to update details.

Grumpy_chap

Some of the criteria mentioned in the letter in the linked article are within the gift of DWP to alter the methods of verifications - for example accepting the "challenger" banks.

Some of the criteria, such as access to switching incentives, are the commercial decisions of the banks.

The letter seems to conflate the two types of parameters.

SimonFF

born_again said:

Really???

No need to  contact UC etc, as part of the CASS is to inform companies of the change of bank details.
Payment goes to old bank acc, gets transferred to new account & message sent to sender to update details.

Yes, you have to contact the DWP and then have a verification in person at the Jobcentre.

zedonk

I switched bank account lots of times when I was on UC, as I needed the switching cash to make ends meet. In my experience, if I let the CASS take care of it, there was never any problem and the money just appeared in my new account. If I tried to tell DWP I had a new bank account, this was when I had to go into the Jobcentre to prove the new account was mine, and my UC payment got delayed until I'd done that.