Regulator calls out Barclays and Santander for breaching retail banking order

Britain’s competition watchdog has rebuked Barclays and Santander UK for breaching rules on transaction history data and presenting information through open banking, respectively.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opted not to take further action against either bank for now, but said it would monitor their “future compliance closely”.

The CMA said Barclays breached rules requiring banks and building societies to send payment transaction histories to personal and business customers who close their current account, which it warned could have made it more difficult for them to obtain credit or switch to another provider.

It said the bank failed to provide 1,648 payment transaction histories to customers between June and August 2023, with a further 659 being sent after a 40-day deadline.

The failings were caused by delays in Barclays’ process for sending batches of histories to its third-party provider for onward sending to ex-customers, the CMA said.

It added that Barclays became aware of the breaches on 12 January 2024 and notified the watchdog on 1 February 2024. Regulation requires firms to report non-compliance to the CMA within 14 days of discovering the issue.

The CMA noted that Barclays had “proactively taken steps to put things right and to prevent a recurrence”, including an “enhanced procedure” for monitoring account closures.

A Barclays spokesperson commented: “Barclays identified the issue and updated the CMA. We have taken steps to make things right, while introducing new processes to make sure this does not happen again.”

The watchdog said Santander breached rules requiring major lenders to ensure “accurate, comprehensive and up to date read-only product and reference information” is continuously available via open banking software.

Santander failed to keep information published through open banking up to date and did not publish some information at all, the CMA found.

It said the failures “may have prevented consumers and small businesses from making informed choices about which product and provider is best for them”.

Some closed bank branches were listed as being open, while some interest rates which should have been published were not, the CMA said.

The CMA said 106 data fields either contained out of date information or had information missing, with the longest failure lasting around seven years.

It added that Santander, which self-reported the issue, had “taken steps to end the breaches and to prevent a recurrence of them”, including simplifying the way it presents information through open banking.

A Santander spokesperson commented: “We self-reported the breach and have taken steps to ensure the issues were rectified and will not be repeated. We have not identified an impact on our customers.”