The Moving Manifest: What Really Travels With You When You Change UK Current Accounts

A service with a defined perimeter

The Current Account Switch Service (CASS) is one of the more quietly effective pieces of UK banking infrastructure. Used by millions of customers since it launched in 2013, it promises a seven-working-day move, a redirected flow of incoming payments for three years, and a guarantee that any charges arising from a switching error are refunded.

That guarantee is genuine and useful. It is also bounded. CASS moves a specific list of arrangements, defined by the scheme's rules rather than by your own idea of what constitutes your banking life. Understanding where that boundary sits is the difference between a smooth migration and a month of chasing unpaid bills.

What the switch does carry across

The scheme works from the payment mandates held against your old account. When you switch, the following are transferred to the new provider and the old mandates are closed:

• Direct debits — council tax, energy, water, mobile contracts, subscriptions collected under the Direct Debit scheme, charity donations and the like.
• Standing orders — the recurring payments you set up yourself, whether to a landlord, a savings account or a family member.
• Recurring credits — salary, pensions, benefits and other regular incoming payments, provided the payer uses the account details on file rather than a saved payee reference of their own.
• The redirect — for three years, payments and credits sent to your old details are forwarded automatically. This is the safety net that catches the arrangements nobody remembered.

In practical terms, most household bills and wages will land correctly without you lifting a finger. That is the part of the promise that holds up.

What stays behind

Here the picture becomes less tidy. The switch is built around payment mandates, not around the broader web of relationships attached to an account.

Recurring card payments

A subscription taken by card — a streaming service, an app store, a gym membership, a software licence — is not a direct debit and carries no mandate in the scheme's sense. The merchant holds your sixteen-digit card number, not your sort code and account number. When the old card is cancelled as part of the switch, those payments simply fail, often with no notification beyond a declined transaction or a terse email weeks later.

This is the single most common source of post-switch friction. The remedy is unglamorous: go through three months of statements before you switch, note every recurring card charge, and update each one manually afterwards.

Saved payees and payee records

Your list of saved payees — the people and businesses you transfer money to — does not transfer. Nor should it, in most cases; a payee list is a record of past behaviour rather than a live obligation. But it means that the first time you pay a plumber or a friend from the new account, you are starting cold, and you should expect a short verification delay under Confirmation of Payee.

Open banking connections

If you use a budgeting app, an account aggregation service or a lender that verifies income through open banking, those consents are tied to the specific account. They will lapse when the account closes. You will need to re-authorise each connection with the new provider, and not every provider supports every app. Check before you move rather than after.

Overdrafts and attached lending

An arranged overdraft is a credit facility, not a payment mandate. It does not travel. If you are moving with a balance owed, settle it or agree a repayment plan with the old provider first — leaving it behind is how a switch turns into a default on your credit file.

Payroll and pension records

Salary credits usually redirect cleanly. But if your employer's payroll system holds a saved payee rather than your raw account details, the redirect may not capture it, and the payment can fail. A short email to payroll confirming your new details is cheap insurance.

The business-account complication

For sole traders and small companies, the switch service covers business accounts too, but the perimeter is narrower in practice. Payment authority structures — dual signatories, mandate limits, approver lists — do not transfer. They must be rebuilt with the new bank, which means fresh mandate forms and, often, a board resolution. Corporate cards need reissuing. Accounting software with a bank feed will need reconnecting, and the feed connection breaks the moment the old account closes.

Any arrangement where a counterparty holds your details in their own system — a supplier's payment file, a customer's direct debit mandate, a payroll bureau — deserves a direct conversation rather than reliance on the redirect.

A practical sequence for the first fortnight

1. Before switching: export twelve months of statements and highlight every recurring card charge.
2. On switch day: confirm to your employer and pension provider that details have changed.
3. Days one to three: update card details with every subscription identified in step one.
4. Days three to seven: re-authorise open banking connections and reconnect accounting feeds.
5. Days seven to fourteen: review the new account for anything that failed, and check the old account's final statement for residual charges.

The redirect is a backstop, not a plan

The three-year redirect is generous, and it does real work. But it forwards payments; it does not rebuild relationships. Treat CASS as the mechanism that moves your mandates and your money, and treat everything else as a short, deliberate checklist of your own. The switch itself takes seven days. The full migration takes an attentive fortnight.