Will closing old, now unused, bank account affect mortgage application?

[Pratch]

I have two bank accounts - one was setup and has been in use constantly for 20 years with a debit card (no credit card) while the other has been setup about 15 years with a credit and debit card and was periodically used but hasn't been used for the best part of 5 years.

I want to close the second account as I don't use it at all and want to stop paying the stamp duty and quarterly fees, but the odd person I've talked to has said that closing an old account can affect a mortgage application as the history of it will be lost so you won't be able to show that you maintained payments on the credit card while the account was active. Is that accurate?

I met a bank re: a mortgage recently and forgot to ask about this but they never mentioned anything about wanting to know my other bank history, just that they'd want to know how much is in the second account and their primary concern re: a mortgage was me being able to demonstrate consistent savings over a recent period of time and that I had a stable job.

I'm going to call the banks now to ask, but thought it still wise to ask here as there could be some little hook that they might not tell me.

 

[Evie1962]

I'm assuming that you used the account to pay for a credit card via direct debit every month? Even if you never kept statements showing the payments to the credit card, the bank will have the records, and as far as I remember from my time in the bank we were required to keep records going back 7 years. In practice it was much longer than that- we had old microfiche records for years in our branch.

The credit card records will be the same - it will show payments every month on the bank internal records also.

No need to worry about any of this re a mortgage application. Just furnish the statements from both accounts and you'll be grand. There's hardly a chance the bank will go back that far anyway unless you have a blip in your financial history that will show up on an ICB check.