Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of (a) levels of bank account switching by customers, (b) trends in bank account switching in the last three years, (c) the average time it takes for customers to switch banks and (d) the process for switching banks and customers' perceptions of the ease or difficulty of so doing.

The Government charged the UK banking industry with delivering a new Current Account Switch Service to make it simpler, safer, and faster to switch current account providers. The new service launched in September 2013, and so far has had a positive impact with switching levels increasing by 22 per cent in its first year, compared to the previous year.

The Payments Council publish a “switching dashboard” quarterly, which is available on their website and includes information on awareness, confidence, service performance, and switching levels.