Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent estimate he has made of the percentage of adults in the UK who do not have a UK bank account.

The Treasury does not make assessments of the number of people who do not have a bank account. However, in 2017, the Financial Conduct Authority published the results of the Financial Lives Survey which found that 1.3 million UK adults were unbanked, i.e. have no current account or alternative e-money account.

The Financial Lives Survey report contains further information on the characteristics of the unbanked. The report analyses survey results across the four nations of the UK, the nine regions of England, and by rural and urban areas. The FCA intend to repeat the Financial Lives Survey on a regular basis in future. The report can be found here:

https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/research/financial-lives-consumers-across-uk.pdf

This government is committed to building an economy where everyone, regardless of their background or income, can access the financial services and products they need, including a bank account. Under the Payment Account Regulations 2015 (PARs) the nine largest personal current account providers in the UK are legally required to offer fee-free basic bank accounts to customers who do not have a bank account or who are ineligible for a bank’s standard current account. Accounts have all the standard payment features such as direct debits and standing orders, though no overdraft or cheque book facilities. The Treasury’s December 2018 publication shows that in total there are nearly 7.5 million basic bank accounts open in the UK.

More generally, in November 2017, the Government announced the creation of the Financial Inclusion Policy Forum. The Forum has now met three times and has successfully brought together key leaders from industry, charities and consumer groups, as well as Government ministers and the regulators, to provide leadership in tackling financial exclusion. The Forum has delivered important work already, and made tangible progress. A sub-group of the Forum set up last summer, examined the issue of access to affordable credit, and made a number of recommendations, many of which formed part of a package on affordable credit presented at Budget 2018. The Government also published its first annual financial inclusion report on 25 March which takes stock of the Government’s progress in this area.