UK Finance recently launched its new banking guide, which promises to simplify the process of opening and managing bank accounts.
The guide, created with banking and voluntary sector partners, is a 17-page digital resource document that can be easily navigated through sectional hyperlinks on the webpage below.
www.ukfinance.org.uk/our-expertise/commercial-finance/voluntary-organisation-banking-guide
The guide is split into the following sections:
- Choosing your organisational structure – advice on choosing the right legal structure for your organisation as some banks offer accounts to registered charities only, and others offer different accounts for voluntary organisations who aren’t charities. Banks may also offer specific accounts if an organisation is incorporated or unincorporated.
- Working out your banking needs – questions designed to help decide what bank account best meets your organisation’s needs. For example, do you require branch-based services, do you require use of a debit card, how regularly do you bank cash and cheques.
- Account finder – an overview of the banking offering of 13 banks and links to their websites. These can be filtered by the most important banking needs of your organisation such as dual authorisation or online mandate changes.
- Account opening checklist – designed to make applying for an account as easy as possible by ensuring that you have all the right information to hand when you wish to open the account. This includes what information you will need for the bank to verify the organisation and verify the identities of those who will be using the account.
- Maintaining your account – a best practice guide to keep your organisation’s bank account up-to-date and running as smoothly as possible. This advises on viewing your voluntary organisation’s account like you would a personal account. If you change address or have a change to personal circumstances, or change a trustee, the bank will need to know. A semi-regular review of banking information, such as a quarterly, is advised.
- FAQs and Glossary – a collection of frequently asked questions and commonly misunderstood or ambiguous banking terms and words. It also includes a range of links to voluntary organisation partners such as the Charity Commission.
This guide is certainly a useful tool for voluntary organisations to understand and prepare for all the information requests you may encounter on your banking journey. However, in the joint letter sent to UK banks last autumn we know what many of the problems arise from inadequate servicing from banks. It is, however, encouraging that several banks have contributed to the guide and have been improving engagement with the charity sector. Time will tell if improvement to services will follow.
