Every few months, a UK bank puts a poster in its branch window offering complete strangers cash simply for moving their current account across. Nationwide, HSBC, First Direct and NatWest have all run offers like this at some point in the past couple of years, and the pattern tends to repeat itself: a headline sum, a handful of conditions buried in the small print, and a deadline that quietly resets every so often. If a bank is willing to pay you to switch, the obvious question is why — and whether the money is actually worth the admin of doing it.
Why banks pay you to move your money
A current account is the cheapest way for a bank to get inside your financial life. Once your salary lands there and your direct debits sit alongside it, you become far more likely to take your next mortgage, savings account or credit card from the same institution rather than shop around, and banks know that inertia is worth more to them long-term than the one-off cost of a bonus. Building a customer base through advertising alone is slow and expensive, whereas paying an existing bank's customer £100–£200 to switch across is a known cost with a fairly predictable return. That's also why the offers tend to cluster around banks trying to grow their share of current accounts — First Direct, the digital-first arm of a bigger group, or Nationwide chasing membership numbers — rather than the ones already sitting on the largest customer base. Barclays and Lloyds, for instance, have leaned far less on cash incentives than Nationwide or HSBC in recent switching seasons, presumably because neither needs to buy market share the same way. None of this makes the offer a trick — the cash genuinely lands in your account if you meet the terms — but it explains why the amount on the table moves around, and why it sometimes disappears entirely for months at a stretch.
What the Current Account Switch Service actually promises
The mechanism behind almost every switch is the Current Account Switch Service, usually shortened to CASS, which has been running since 2013 and now covers the large majority of UK current account providers. Ask your new bank to handle the move and it closes the old account, transfers the balance, and shifts every direct debit and standing order across within seven working days from the date you choose — not seven days from whenever you eventually get round to it. Anyone who pays into or takes money from the old account keeps working automatically for three years after the switch, because CASS quietly redirects payments in the background rather than relying on you to notify every provider by hand. Deposits are protected up to £85,000 per banking licence under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which matters more than people assume if you're consolidating savings into a single account rather than just moving everyday spending.
The catches that erase the bonus
Every offer comes with conditions, and missing one of them is the easiest way to do the admin and collect nothing at all.
- A minimum monthly deposit, usually somewhere between £1,000 and £1,500, which has to arrive as a genuine incoming payment such as a salary — most banks explicitly exclude transfers from your own savings account, and their systems do flag it when someone tries.
- At least two active direct debits moved across and left running
- A ban on holding — or having recently closed — an account with the same bank, often for six or twelve months, so switchers can't just cycle through the same three providers every year
- An application cut-off date, after which the same account might still be open for new customers but with no bonus attached, and providers tend to let these deadlines lapse quietly rather than announce them
Miss the funding threshold in the first month and most banks won't backdate the bonus even if you top it up correctly the month after, so it pays to read the terms before setting a switch date rather than after the direct debits have already moved. There's one genuine wrinkle worth flagging: if your salary comes from a small employer that updates payroll details manually rather than through an automated system, the CASS redirect covers you for incoming payments, but the switch itself can take an extra pay cycle to show up correctly on their end — worth a heads-up email to whoever runs payroll before switch day.
Who should switch, and who should sit this one out
So what about someone who switched six months ago and is already eyeing the next offer?
Most banks bar you from earning a second bonus at the same institution for a year or more, but nothing stops you switching to a different bank in the meantime — the catch is that your credit file logs every new current account application, and several in quick succession can look odd to a lender's risk model even though none of it affects your score directly. If you already bank with a large, established provider and rarely if ever use your overdraft, switch: £100–£200 for twenty minutes of admin and a short wait is a good return on the effort, and there's no meaningful downside once the direct debits have moved. Don't bother, though, if you're partway through a mortgage application — lenders review months of account history during underwriting, and a brand-new current account with no track record can complicate an affordability check at exactly the wrong moment. Chasing a switching bonus the week before you submit a mortgage application is a mistake people make more often than banks would like to admit.
Digital-only banks such as Monzo and Starling sit slightly outside this pattern. Both are full CASS members and switches to and from them work exactly the same way, but they've historically been less likely to run headline cash bonuses than the high-street names, leaning instead on budgeting tools and fee-free spending abroad to win customers. If a cash bonus is the whole point of switching, that narrows the realistic shortlist to whichever high-street or building society name currently has an offer live — and that list changes often enough that it's worth a quick check right before you apply rather than relying on what was on offer three months ago.
Running the switch without losing track
The process itself is simple once you commit to a date, but a few small steps make the difference between a clean switch and a month of chasing missing payments.
- Check the bonus terms in full before applying — minimum funding amount, direct debit count, and any exclusion period from a previous account with that bank.
- Apply through the new bank's app or website and select a switch date at least a week out, giving CASS time to process everything cleanly.
- Keep the old account open (most banks require this anyway) until you've had at least one full pay cycle land in the new one.
- Screenshot your list of direct debits and standing orders before the switch, so you have something to check against afterwards.
- Watch for the bonus payment itself — it rarely arrives on switch day and can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of months depending on the bank's own payment schedule.
What happens to the account you leave behind
CASS closes the old account automatically as part of the switch, but any money left in there, any linked savings pot, or any credit card tied to that banking app for logins doesn't move with it — those need sorting separately, and it's easy to forget a small linked cash ISA or a rainy-day pot sitting under the old login until a statement turns up months later asking why the account's gone quiet. Check what's actually attached to the account before switch day, not after the letter confirming closure lands on the mat.