Community & Support News

Overseas Personnel Bank Accounts Potential Closure

On 31 January 2020, the UK left the European Union (EU) and entered a ‘transition period’ which ends on 31 December 2020. Whether UK banks can service customers living in an EU/European Economic Area (EEA) country after this date is a matter of local law and regulation and may be impacted by how firms are set up, and what steps they have taken to continue to service customers.

From 31 December 2020 some UK-based building societies and banks may choose to no longer provide financial services to customers living in certain EU/EEA countries. Your bank or finance provider will contact you if they need to make any changes to your product, the way they provide it, or withdraw services altogether. If you have any concerns about whether you might be affected, you should speak to your provider.

Like other UK Government employees working and living overseas, members of the Armed Forces are classed as Crown Servants. Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide have confirmed that they will exempt customers who are UK Crown Servants from announced closures.

What should you do?

If you live outside the UK and hear nothing from your bank or building society then you should assume that you are unaffected. If you remained concerned, please speak to your banking provider.

If you bank with Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group or Nationwide, and receive a letter or email seeking to close your account, you should contact them and let them know that you are a Crown Servant and that you understand their policy is to continue to provide banking services to Crown Servants working and living outside the UK. The final decision whether to continue to provide you with banking services lies with the provider.

Given the assurances provided by Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and Nationwide, to continue to support UK Crown Servants working overseas with UK banking services, the AF Rem Pay Team would be interested to know of instances where these providers fail to follow through on these commitments (made to HM Treasury colleagues) as they impact on Service personnel.

Therefore, in cases where personnel who identify themselves as Crown Servants are still required to close their bank accounts, with one of these three providers only, please email the following details to us at [email protected] so that we may report this back to colleagues in HM Treasury:

  • Surname
  • Service Number
  • Bank Provider
  • Branch Sort Code

If you bank with another provider and receive a letter or email seeking to close your account, you should contact them and let them know that you are a Crown Servant and ask whether this fact changes their decision. However, the final decision whether to continue to provide you with banking services lies with the provider.

If you receive a letter or email from any provider seeking to close your account, it may be conditional on you being able to provide an alternative UK address. For some years the UK financial institutions have accepted BFPO addresses as equivalent to UK addresses. If this option is available to you at your overseas location, your provider may accept a change of address to one which includes a BFPO number as sufficient to continue to offer banking services to you.

If a Service person is required to change the bank account into which their salary is paid, then please note that:  Those utilising the Bank Switching Service will have their bank details updated automatically and a JPA workflow produced (workflows not accessed within 10 working days will automatically redirect to Unit HR) notifying them of this change.

Otherwise, personnel should update their bank details on JPA as soon as possible using the JPA Self Service Function. Those using the Bank Switching Service can also update their details via JPA rather than wait for the automated change process to be applied.