Account registers: who can see your bank accounts

The EU's anti-money-laundering directive (AMLD5) has obliged every member state since 2020 to run central automated mechanisms through which authorities can access bank-account information quickly and directly. Every member state keeps its own national register, and the EU is connecting these registers step by step; a single EU-wide central register with real-time access across all member states does not yet exist as of 2026.

For every account, the register holds: the holder's name and date of birth, account number and IBAN, opening and closing dates, and the bank's name. Balances and transaction data are not included, but the bare visibility of an account's existence is enough for many official purposes.

Across EU member states, the registers are open to tax authorities, social-benefit agencies, enforcement officers, prosecutors, customs and the financial supervisor, varying slightly by country. Whether you are told depends on the country. In Germany, retrieval under the Fiscal Code is not secret: under section 93(9) of the Abgabenordnung, you must be told in advance that a retrieval is possible, which a general note in official forms and leaflets can satisfy, and the requesting authority must notify you after the retrieval. Both are dropped only in statutory exceptions, for example where informing you would endanger the authority's work or public safety, and for retrievals by the police to avert danger and by the domestic intelligence services.

The UK keeps no single central account register of this kind, and reaches a comparable result by other means. HMRC's Connect system matches financial data from banks, land registries, payment platforms and dozens of other feeds at scale. Since 2021, Financial Institution Notices let HMRC require account information directly from banks without tribunal approval. You are not left in the dark by default: under paragraph 4A of Schedule 36 to the Finance Act 2008, HMRC must give you a copy of the notice and a summary of its reasons, unless a tribunal, on an application made without notice to you, disapplies that because telling you might prejudice the assessment or collection of tax. In that case the bank can be barred from telling you, for 12 months at a time (paragraph 51A). And banks themselves feed closure and risk data into shared industry databases. The route differs; the destination, an authority's quick view into your domestic accounts, is the same.

The EU registers capture exclusively accounts at banks seated inside the EU, and HMRC's notice powers bind institutions within the UK's jurisdiction. A bank in Georgia, Singapore, the USA or the UAE feeds no data into either system. Your account there is simply not retrievable through the domestic machinery.

That does not mean you need not declare the account. The duty to declare foreign accounts in your tax return remains. But the automatic, official retrievability without a court order falls away.

An account beyond your home system gives you financial privacy back. Not by circumventing any law, but by the plain fact that the registers only capture the banks within their own walls.

The EU works continuously on expanding the registers. AMLD6 and the EU's anti-money-laundering authority AMLA (founded 2024, seated in Frankfurt, operational since mid-2025) will extend the powers further; the long-term plan is a Europe-wide central register with real-time access across all member states. As of 2026, the national registers are not yet fully connected; AMLA's build-out and AMLD6's implementation will accelerate the process. The UK's direction of travel is the same: more data feeds, broader notice powers, deeper matching.

Whoever acts today secures an information edge. An account beyond your home system is legal and straightforward to open today. That could change if international agreements are extended.