More than 92% of Ulster Bank and KBC Bank Ireland accounts closed

Just over 92 per cent of current accounts that were open in Ulster Bank and KBC Bank at the beginning of last year were either closed or inactive as at end of April this year, according to the Central Bank.

Both banks are currently in the process of exiting the Irish market after announced their intentions to leave in 2021. As a result customers who had current and deposit accounts at these institutions and continue to need access to these types of accounts will therefore need to seek alternative banking arrangements.

The Central Bank established a bespoke statistical collection on account migration from the two exiting banks, and the three largest remaining retail banks; AIB, Bank of Ireland, and Permanent TSB.

The collection monitors the migration activity of all customers, including households and small and medium enterprises (SME), as well as any other counterparty not included in these two groups.

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As at the end of end of April, 33,095 current accounts in Ulster Bank and KBC Bank were deemed by banks as the customer’s primary account.

The Central Bank said the true figure is likely to be even lower as the definition of a primary account is backward looking based on the customer’s past activity.

Accounts will continue to be designated as primary until the necessary amount of time has passed since their previous transactions.

A total of 104,758 current and deposit accounts were closed in the two exiting banks in the four weeks to end-April.

This represented an increase of 21 per cent when compared with a corresponding four-week period to the end of March. This brings the total number of accounts closed since the beginning of 2022 at these two banks to 1,090,781.

A total of 44,172 accounts were opened in the four weeks to the end of April in the main remaining banks, which was a decrease of 11 per cent when compared with the corresponding period to end-March.

More recent account opening figures are likely less related to migrating accounts as the trend in account openings over the past two months is largely in line with “business as usual” openings observed in the market between 2019 and 2021.

In total, 1,200,810 current and deposit accounts were opened across the three remaining retail banks since the beginning of 2022.