How far can banks go back with statements? (2024)

Hi All

I need to check up on whether cheques have been lodged to an account. I don't have Internet banking - Which as I understand it would go back 7 years -
I'm wondering Just how far back a bank can go back as regards statements they can provide?
The banks I'm referring to are Bank Of Ireland and AIB

Thanks

Normally it is either 6 and a half or 7 years. There was an embargo on the destruction on banking records due to the Flood and other tribuanals but when that was lifted a few years back, the banks had a big clear out as it was costing them a fortune in storage, management and retrieval costs.

You should also be able to get a copy of the cheques in question from your bank, the endorsem*nts on them will give a clue as to where they were lodged

Just wondering if you are talking about a lot of statements which may cost a lot of money.

Think statement machines in branches might only go back two years and not sure if you need internet access to use those.

Sue Ellen said:

Just wondering if you are talking about a lot of statements which may cost a lot of money.

Think statement machines in branches might only go back two years and not sure if you need internet access to use those.

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Thanks to all for getting back to me - My aim is to go back as far as possible. I visited the bank in person and was advised that they will get back to me.

They're obliged to keep records of customer accounts for at least 5 years under anti money laundering legislation:

If you Google you'll see that most banks have a policy of keeping them for at least 7 years and maybe longer in certain cases.

Pmc365 said:

Is it the case nowadays banks actually destroy bank statement records after about 7 years?

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It depends on the account type. You should be able to get a statement for a mortgage account from inception, but current account records are routinely destroyed after 7 years where there is no legal / regulatory basis for keeping them longer. Banks are matching various requirements such as CPC, CCMA, AML, CCR, etc which require that certain data must be kept for a specified period, and on the other hand GDPR requirements that you can only hold data as long as you need it. Plus it costs an absolute fortune to store data indefinitely in an accessible form.

Pmc365 said:

I thought banks kept records for decades. About 20 years ago this was the case. They were held on microfilm, a form of condensed photocopy on film. I know the technology was anologue. I remember as a child who frequented banks alot with savings staff lookjng at these microfilm sheets on readers which looked like a computer.
Is it the case nowadays banks actually destroy bank statement records after about 7 years? I'm glad I never throwaway bank statements.
I know certain Life Assurance companies keep records for decades.

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They had a major clear out once the embargo on destruction of banking records was lifted a few years back once the Tribunals were done. Obviously, if you have a contract for a product such as a mortgage that is longer then 7 years, those records would be kept

I don’t have an account anymore but AIB used to let you download transactions in CSV format which was useful for looking up specific lodgements .

From memory the download was for more than 5 years.

Sunny said:

It really depends on institution, account type and account status. You wont get a straight answer here.

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As I said above, by law they have to keep at least 5 years of records so that's the base line minimum.

There is a litigation rule of thumb that records should be kept for 6 years - this is the time period for the statute of limitations in breach of contract cases.

I had cause to seek records from Aib recently. They provided me with my mortgage statements under a data access request going back over 10 years to when the account was opened. As regards my other bank aib account statements, they refused to provide me with any under a data access request and said to either go online or contact my branch. (I didn’t bother doing the latter). Online statements with aib are available to me (as of today) back to September 2016.

I put in a data access request with Ulster Bank last year (when it was still operating in Ireland) and they provided me with statements going back around 10 years from when I first opened the account.

ClubMan said:

As I said above, by law they have to keep at least 5 years of records so that's the base line minimum.

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That's only one piece of legislation relating to money laundering. There are multiple pieces of legislation and regulations that Banks need to adhere to that make the minimum longer.. There is CRS/FATCA legislation. There is GDPR legislation. CBI require records to be kept for 6 years. The FSPO has their own requirements around how long mortgage records are kept. If there is an investigation or case relating to some data, the minimum retention period is longer. Most bank data retention policies will state 7 years but that will always be a general rule. I have never seen a 'Standard' data retention period of any bank of less than 7 years. If your account is still open, they will probably be able go back further (but I wouldn't count on it) but if your account is closed and you haven't had a transaction with them in more than 7 years, then chances are that every single bit of your customer record is gone.

Like I said, there is no straight answer as to how far back you can go but the 'baseline minimum' as you put it is longer than 5 years.

One of the most impactful court judgments in the last ten years, when it comes to debt collection, is the Supreme Court decision in the O'Malley case. See link below:

https://www.courts.ie/acc/alfresco/...8-4d5287fd1add/2019_IESC_84.pdf/pdf#view=fitH

In that case, BOI were unable to proceed with their case until they exhibited bank statements going back to 2008.

In summary, if a bank ever wishes to sue on a debt, it needs to exhibit ALL bank statements going to to the original granting of the loan.

Jim Stafford

Jim Stafford said:

In summary, if a bank ever wishes to sue on a debt, it needs to exhibit ALL bank statements going to to the original granting of the loan.

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But this is still a rare event.

I can imagine a bank having a system in place to be able to access its own records forever, but not granting such routine access (due to cost) to its customers.

Dr Strangelove said:

I can imagine a bank having a system in place to be able to access its own records forever,

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No. And definitely not for current accounts. Purging data is a full time job in any of the large banks.

RedOnion said:

No. And definitely not for current accounts. Purging data is a full time job in any of the large banks.

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And imagine the GDPR fine if someone closed their account or loan agreement ended and the bank kept their details forever! Data has become a real problem area for banks. As you say, it consumes a large amount of banks time and resources trying to ensure it is managed.

Sunny said:

Like I said, there is no straight answer as to how far back you can go but the 'baseline minimum' as you put it is longer than 5 years.

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Ok - so the baseline minimum is more than 5 years.

ClubMan said:

Ok - so the baseline minimum is more than 5 years.

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6.5 to seven years

Worked with banks as clients over donkey's years. They all have warehouse full of "stuff" with boxes upon boxes of paper records. Until the embargo on destruction of banking records was lifted, as an example. they were required to physically store every cheque drawn on them and processed and going back 10 years ago, that alone was probably in excess of 250k cheques a day across the 5 main banks at the time. Between them, they were probably storing in excess of 100 million pieces of paper a year and over the course of perhaps a 10 year period, the figure is likely to be over 1 billion pieces of paper in storage between head offices, storage sites and branches.

There is no incentive to digitise a lot of the this, now that they can destroy they are probably letting it sit there and hope it is never called upon until it is time to be shredded/incinerated. Obviously, with the move to digital, the amount of paper has reduced in recent year and a lot more has also moved from microfilm/fiche to digital records. But there is still a lot there