Breaches of the retail banking order that could have made it more difficult for customers who closed their current accounts to obtain credit or switch providers have resulted in sterm rebukes for Barclays and Santander from the UK’s Competition and Markets authority (CMA).

The regulator wrote to both banks setting out details of the breaches and saying that their future compliance would be “monitored closely.” No further action is to be taken.

In its letter to Barclays, the CMA referred to breaches under Part 5 of the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017.  The section requires banks and building societies to provide Personal Transaction Histories (PTH) to personal or business current account customers who close their accounts.

Barclays’ failures

The CMA says Barclays failed to provide 1,648 transaction histories to customers between June and August 2023, and that a further 659 were sent after a 40-day deadline. Barclays self-identified the issues and made the CMA aware of the breaches on February 1, 2020. But the letter contains a reminder to Barclays that “under Article 56.2 of the Order, if it is aware that it is not compliant with any part of the Order, it must report this non-compliance to the CMA within 14 days of becoming aware that it is not compliant.”

The letter said: “The requirement for providers to provide transaction history data to customers at the time of account closure is an important element of our reforms introduced following the Market Investigation.” It continued: “We found that some customers were concerned that, by moving to a new current account provider they would lose access to their banking history, which is often required by lenders when offering credit.”

The CMA noted Barclays had taken remedial action, and the regulator will be monitoring how this is implemented. Barclays said: “Barclays identified the issue and updated the CMA. We have taken steps to make things right, while introducing new processes to make sure this does not happen again.”

Santander breaches

The breaches by Santander came under Part 2 of the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017. This requires “accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date Read-only product and reference information” is made available continuously through open banking APIs.

Santander failed to keep published information up to date, or in some cases to publish information at all. The letter stated: “One hundred and six data fields either contained out of date information or had information missing. The longest failure was around seven years. For example, some bank branches which were listed as being open were in fact closed and some interest rates which should have been published were not. “

These breaches were self-reported by Santander and action taken to put things right. Again, the CMA will monitor future compliance closely. Santander said: “We self-reported the breach and have taken steps to ensure the issues were rectified and will not be repeated. We have not identified an impact on our customers.”