CASS plays Casanova to CMA’s current account commitments
The UK’s Current Account Switch Service (CASS) says it meets one of the commitments set out in response to the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) final report into retail banking.
As Banking Technology reported in January, the CMA accepted undertakings from the Bacs payment scheme, which owns and manages CASS, that commit it to delivering the improvements required by the CMA retail banking market investigation within a year.
In its first “Current Account Switch Service” annual report, Bacs says it “has delivered 12 months early to outline the many successes achieved over the last three-and-a-half years, since the UK’s flagship service was launched”.
According to Bacs, during this time over 3.5 million current accounts have been switched, while the number of banks and building societies participating in the service has grown to 47, with the first mobile-only bank (Starling Bank) joining the scheme earlier this week.
Bacs says it is meeting the CMA’s wider range of undertakings. This includes “strengthening the customer guarantee (including indefinite payment redirection where needed), appointing an independent chair of the CASS executive committee, increasing awareness levels among all groups and working with industry partners to further simplify switching for overdraft users”.
In addition, its research programme found consumers are “now getting better value for money from their current accounts and benefiting from more competition in the marketplace”, since the launch of CASS.
Its research found a potential saving of £116 could be achieved from switching account, compared to less than half that ten years ago.
The 24-page CASS annual report can be found here.
