Changing your address with your bank when you move house

Most moving checklists give the bank one line — "tell your bank" — right next to "tell your insurer" and "tell the council", as if they're all the same kind of task. They aren't. The council can fine you and DVLA can fine you. Your bank can't. There's no statutory deadline and no penalty for telling it late. So it's worth being clear about what the actual reason is, because "nobody fines you" is not the same as "it doesn't matter".

Why it matters anyway

The reason sits in money-laundering law, and it's a duty on the bank rather than on you. Under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, a bank or building society has to carry out "ongoing monitoring" of every account it holds, which the regulations define as including "reviews of existing records and keeping the documents or information obtained for the purpose of applying customer due diligence measures up-to-date." Your address is part of that record. The regulations bind "credit institutions" and "financial institutions" alike, so this applies to a building society exactly as much as a bank.

In practice, that's why a bank periodically re-checks who you are and where you live, sometimes years after you opened the account, and why an address it can't verify is more likely to trigger a hold on online access or a request for fresh ID than an address it can. Nobody is going to write to you about a missed deadline. The friction shows up later, at a moment you didn't choose, as a locked-out login or a card that won't reissue until you've sorted it.

How to actually do it

1. 1

   Check the app or online banking first

   Most current providers now let you update your address yourself, in minutes, from your phone. It's usually under a settings or profile section headed something like "your details" or "personal details".

2. 2

   If there's no online option, it's phone, post or branch

   Nationwide's own help page, for one, says that generally "you can update your details online, by phone, post or in your local branch", with the options depending on the product — its mortgages, for example, are branch or phone only. Check what your provider offers for each account.

3. 3

   Bring ID to a branch, especially for anything other than a personal current account

   A business, club or society account typically needs a branch visit with valid ID — Nationwide's page is explicit that photocopies and certified copies aren't accepted there. If in doubt, ring first and ask what they'll need.

4. 4

   If you're posting a letter, use the address on your statement

   Not the branch you use day to day — banks route customer-service post to a specific back-office address, printed on the back of your statement or your card carrier, which usually isn't the branch address at all.

What doesn't change

A change of address doesn't touch your Direct Debits, standing orders or card payments — they run on your account number and sort code, not on where you live, so rent, mortgage, subscriptions and everything else keep working exactly as before. What does need telling is anyone who was writing to the old address rather than paying out of the account: a paper statement, a renewal notice, a replacement card sent because the old one expired or was lost.

Where it fits in the move

There's no reason to wait until moving day, unlike HMRC, and no reason to rush it before exchange either, unlike your insurer. Any point in the weeks around the move works. The one thing worth doing early is checking whether your bank needs a branch visit — if it does, that's easier to fit in before the move than after, while you can still get to the branch you know.

The rest of the account-holding list — building societies, credit cards, pension providers and the rest — is on who to notify when moving house, with savings and Premium Bonds on the change of address checklist, and moving-day insurance cover is covered separately on telling your insurer when you move.

MovePlan drafts an address-change letter to your bank or building society, filled in with your name, both addresses and your move date, for the accounts that need doing by post rather than in an app. It doesn't contact your bank or submit anything on your behalf — you send what it drafts, or use it as a script for the phone call or app form instead.