Dataset · source Pay.UK
How many businesses actually switch account
Switching volumes for small business and charity accounts, from the Current Account Switch Service — and an honest account of what this data can and cannot tell you about where businesses are going.
Key findings
7,915 switches
Small business and charity accounts switched between January and March 2026, rising each month from 2,525 to 2,745.
2.0% – 2.9%
Business and charity accounts are a small fraction of the 1,151,244 switches completed in the year to March 2026 — and Pay.UK says the true share is higher.
Interest, 2nd
Interest earned was the second most cited reason for preferring a new account, at 32%, behind only online and mobile banking.
Monthly switching volumes
Small business and small charity accounts, alongside total switches.
| Month | All switches | Small business & charity | Personal / business split |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | 128,199 | 3,656 | 97.1 / 2.9 |
| Nov 2025 | 124,650 | 2,448 | 98.0 / 2.0 |
| Dec 2025 | 97,265 | 2,296 | 97.6 / 2.4 |
| Jan 2026 | 92,227 | 2,525 | 97.3 / 2.7 |
| Feb 2026 | 120,020 | 2,645 | 97.8 / 2.2 |
| Mar 2026 | 107,282 | 2,745 | 97.4 / 2.6 |
What this data cannot tell you
We came to this expecting to answer the obvious question: which bank are businesses switching to? The quarterly dashboard does not answer it, and it is worth being explicit about why.
Pay.UK publishes a brand-level table of gains and losses, reproduced below. But its own footnote states that the figures include personal end users, small businesses and small charities together. There is no business-only breakdown in it. Nationwide’s 64,527 net gain is overwhelmingly personal switching, and attributing any of it to businesses would be inventing a number.
The brand table, and how to read it
Covering switches completed 1 October to 31 December 2025, published three months in arrears. Personal, small business and small charity switches combined.
| Brand | Gains | Losses | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nationwide | 87,996 | 23,469 | +64,527 |
| Barclays | 52,527 | 33,993 | +18,534 |
| Lloyds Bank | 48,834 | 36,761 | +12,073 |
| Monzo Bank Limited | 20,483 | 11,409 | +9,074 |
| NatWest | 37,210 | 36,022 | +1,188 |
| Co-operative | 9,504 | 9,251 | +253 |
| TSB | 17,542 | 17,370 | +172 |
| Danske | 893 | 805 | +88 |
| Triodos Bank | 219 | 150 | +69 |
| AIB Group (UK) p.l.c. | 122 | 483 | −361 |
| Bank Of Ireland | 19 | 437 | −418 |
| Ulster Bank | 148 | 790 | −642 |
| RBS | 6,938 | 7,739 | −801 |
| Low Volume Participants | 1,793 | 4,868 | −3,075 |
| Bank of Scotland | 745 | 4,165 | −3,420 |
| Starling Bank Ltd | 3,270 | 7,569 | −4,299 |
| Virgin Money | 5,650 | 11,767 | −6,117 |
| J.P Morgan CHASE | 3,793 | 17,679 | −13,886 |
| HSBC | 23,519 | 44,337 | −20,818 |
| Santander | 22,851 | 46,646 | −23,795 |
| Halifax | 2,607 | 28,236 | −25,629 |
Source: Pay.UK, CASS Dashboard issue 50. Data owned by the individual participants and published with their consent. Allica Bank and Revolut are included within Low Volume Participants. Co-operative includes smile; HSBC includes first direct; RBS includes Coutts.
Why switchers preferred their new account
Q1 2026, all switchers. 68% said they preferred their new account; 2% said it was worse.
Two things worth noticing
Interest is the second reason people move, cited by 32% — ahead of customer service, branches and features. That is a consumer figure, but it maps directly onto what we find on the business side, where the gap between the best and worst instant access rate is sevenfold.
Starling lost 4,299 net switchers in the quarter. We would not read too much into a personal-heavy figure, and Starling remains second in our own business ranking. But it is the only provider in our top five with a negative net position, and it is also the only one paying nothing at all on business balances.
The providers with the strongest business propositions are largely invisible here. Allica and Revolut sit inside “Low Volume Participants”, and OakNorth, Tide, ANNA, Wise and Airwallex do not participate in CASS at all — so a business moving to any of them leaves no trace in this dataset.
Method and limits
- Source. Pay.UK, Current Account Switch Service Dashboard issue 50, covering 1 January to 31 March 2026, published 30 April 2026. Figures read from the dashboard itself.
- Coverage. Only switches made through CASS. A business that opens an account and moves its payments manually does not appear.
- Participation. 53 brands take part. Several of the strongest business account providers do not.
- Brand data lag. Three months in arrears, and not separated by end-user type.
- Business and charity combined, because banks frequently record charity accounts as business accounts.
Pay.UK has published business-specific brand-level switching in separate annual releases. We have not yet verified those figures against the source document, so we are not publishing them here — see our methodology for why we do not publish figures we have only seen summarised.
Common questions
How many businesses switch bank accounts each year?
In the twelve months to March 2026 the Current Account Switch Service completed 1,151,244 switches in total, of which roughly 2 to 3% were small business or small charity accounts — around 30,000 a year. Pay.UK states the real figure is higher, because many sole traders switch a personal account they use for business.
Which bank are businesses switching to?
The quarterly CASS dashboard does not say. Its brand-level table explicitly combines personal, small business and small charity switches, so no brand figure in it can be attributed to businesses. Pay.UK has published business-specific brand data in separate annual releases, but not in the quarterly dashboards.
Why does CASS combine small businesses and charities?
Because many banks record small charity accounts as small business accounts, so the two cannot be separated reliably. Pay.UK says so directly in the dashboard.
Does CASS capture every business account switch?
No. It only counts switches made through the Service. A business that opens a new account and moves its payments manually — common when keeping the old account open — does not appear in these figures at all.
Can I reuse this data?
The underlying figures are published by Pay.UK and belong to them; cite Pay.UK for those. Our compilation, CSV and commentary are free to reuse with attribution and a link.