Your Bank Wants to Close Your Account: The 90-Day Rule That Started in April 2026

Account closure used to be the part of banking with the least explanation attached. A letter arrived, a date was given, and the reason was usually some version of "commercial decision". In the UK that changed on 28 April 2026, and the change is more substantial than the coverage suggested.

What actually changed

Regulation 51 of the Payment Services Regulations 2017 was replaced by regulations 51 to 51D, substituted by S.I. 2025/688 with effect from 28 April 2026. The operative rule for closures sits in regulation 51B.

Before terminating a framework contract concluded for an indefinite period and entered into on or after 28 April 2026, a payment service provider must provide the customer with a notice of termination. Three requirements follow, and each one addresses a specific complaint about how closures used to work.

The notice must explain why. In the words of the regulation, it must "contain an explanation of the reasons for termination which is sufficiently detailed and specific to enable the payment service user to understand why the framework contract is being terminated". A generic line about commercial decisions does not meet that test.

The notice must tell you how to fight it. It has to advise you how a complaint may be made to the provider, and of any right you have to complain to the ombudsman scheme established under Part 16 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000.

The notice must arrive at least 90 days before it takes effect. The regulation says the notice "must be provided at least 90 days before the termination is to take effect", which is a considerable change from the two months that framework contracts commonly specified.

The date test that decides whether this applies to you

Read the heading of regulation 51B carefully, because it contains the limit: "Termination of framework contract entered into on or after 28th April 2026".

The 90-day rule attaches to contracts entered into on or after that date, not to every closure happening after it. An account you have held for years was opened under a contract concluded earlier. This is the single most misunderstood point about the reform, and it is why two people can receive very different notice in the same month and both be treated lawfully.

The exceptions are real, and they are not loopholes

Regulation 51B(4) says that where a requirement in the regulation conflicts with another legal requirement the provider is subject to, "the other legal requirement prevails to the extent of the conflict".

That is not a drafting nicety. A provider under financial-crime obligations may be legally prohibited from explaining what it suspects or from giving notice at all. Regulation 51D also carries exceptions relating to certain public order offences. So the honest summary is: you have a right to a detailed reason and 90 days unless another law says otherwise, and the situations where another law says otherwise are exactly the ones where you would most want an explanation.

Understanding that in advance is worth more than being surprised by it. A closure with no reason given is not automatically a breach; it may be a provider complying with a different obligation.

Your side of the same regulation

The symmetry is worth knowing. Under regulation 51 you may terminate the framework contract at any time, unless the parties have agreed a notice period, and any agreed notice period may not exceed one month.

Two further protections sit alongside it. Any termination charge "must reasonably correspond to the actual costs" of termination, and the provider may not charge you at all for terminating after six months of the contract. Charges levied regularly must be apportioned to the termination date, and anything paid in advance reimbursed proportionally.

What to do when a notice arrives

• Read the reason against the standard, not against your expectations. The test in the regulation is whether it is detailed and specific enough for you to understand why. If it is not, that is the substance of a complaint.

• Diarise the effective date immediately. Ninety days is time to move properly rather than in a panic, and it is the whole point of the change.

• Complain to the provider first. The notice must tell you how; using that route is normally a precondition of the ombudsman looking at it.

• Move the incoming payments before the outgoing ones. Salary and benefits landing in a closed account are far more disruptive than a failed direct debit.

• Do not wait to open the replacement. Opening an account while you still hold another is easier than opening one after a closure.

What the account can and cannot do during the notice period

A notice of termination is not a freeze, and the two are frequently confused because they sometimes arrive together. A closure notice sets a future date; the account continues to operate until then unless something separate has restricted it. A freeze or restriction is a different action, taken for different reasons, and it can happen with no notice at all.

If the account is still working, use the 90 days deliberately rather than waiting. Move the salary or benefit mandate first, because a payment arriving at a closed account is the failure that takes longest to unwind. Then move direct debits and standing orders, then card-on-file subscriptions, which are the ones people forget until a service stops. Keep a small balance in the closing account until you have seen a full billing cycle pass without a failed collection.

Ask the provider in writing what happens to any balance remaining on the closure date and how it will be returned. That is an ordinary question with an ordinary answer, and having it in writing removes the worst version of this situation — a closed account with money in it and no agreed route out.

If nobody will open a replacement

The harder case is not the closure but what follows. Where a closure is connected to something that shows up in checks elsewhere, the replacement application can be refused too, and the practical answer is usually a basic account rather than a full-featured one. Basic accounts exist precisely so that people can be paid and pay bills, they are subject to their own access rules, and they are worth asking for by name rather than reapplying repeatedly for a product that keeps declining you.

The structural lesson

This reform is a reminder that the account relationship is a contract with rules on both sides, and the rules are published. If the closure is happening because of who holds the licence rather than who holds the brand, what happens when a neobank fails covers that different scenario, and how to check a bank licence tells you which entity you are actually contracting with.

The best protection against a closure of any kind remains structural rather than legal: more than one provider, at more than one institution, so that no single letter can stop your money moving. Our guide to comparing accounts covers choosing the second one.

This is general information about UK regulations, not legal advice. The regulation linked above is the authority, other jurisdictions differ, and the exceptions in regulation 51D matter as much as the rule.