Ulster Bank and KBC Closures
Ulster Bank and KBC have announced the cessation of banking services in Ireland. As a result, customers of these banks (Personal and Business) are required to seek alternative banking arrangements. You can find more information about the closures here- Ulster Bank - www.ulsterbank.ie
- KBC - www.kbc.ie
Payments to Ulster Bank and KBC Account Holders
If you are currently making payments to beneficiaries (e.g. staff, suppliers) who hold accounts with KBC or Ulster Bank in Ireland, you can expect that these account details will change in the coming months. Consider the following:
- Understand the impact these changes will have on your business. If you have a large volume of payments to these banks, you may want to contact the beneficiaries to prompt them to provide updated bank details. As services cease, payments to Ulster Bank and KBC may be rejected by those banks. You may then face additional administration dealing with rejected payments.
- Exercise extreme caution when changing bank details. Follow your processes when verifying changes to beneficiary bank details. If you do not have a process to verify changes to bank details you should create one including checks to verify the legitimacy of any such requests such as call backs. Given the large number of customers changing bank details, it is expected that criminals will most likely use the situation to attempt fraud (e.g. invoice redirect fraud) so pay additional attention to change requests.
- Assess your Payroll impact. Remind impacted employees to provide updated bank details as soon as possible to avoid the risk of rejected salary payments.
If you are a SEPA Direct Debit Creditor and collect payments from customers with accounts in Ulster Bank and KBC, those customers will need to provide you with updated bank details in order for you to continue processing SEPA Direct Debit collections. Consider the following:
- Identify impacted debtors. You may want to contact these debtors advising them they will be required to provide updated bank details or a new mandate in order to continue paying by SEPA Direct Debit.
- Prepare for requests under the Current Account Switching Code. You may receive requests to update bank details directly from Ulster Bank or KBC.
- Hold a valid SEPA Direct Debit authorisation. Where your debtor changes their bank details ensure you have a valid mandate authorising you to collect SEPA Direct Debits from the debtor’s account.
When making payments using SEPA or collecting payments using SEPA Direct Debit, it is important that you can accept IBANs from a SEPA reachable financial institution. Refusal to accept an IBAN from a SEPA reachable institution is referred to as IBAN discrimination and is not permitted under SEPA. For a list of SEPA reachable BIC codes see www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu
If you are a Danske Bank Ireland customer and require further information on the impact of these changes on your business, please contact your relationship manager or cash manager.
Last updated 25 October 2022
