Account registers: who can see your bank accounts
Since 2020, EU authorities can retrieve all of a citizen's bank accounts inside the EU in seconds, without warning and without a court order. The UK runs its own visibility machinery. What that means, and why foreign accounts sit outside both.
What are the EU account registers?
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.
Who has access, and what does the UK run instead?
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. Retrieval happens without notifying the account holder; you do not learn when and by whom your account data was pulled. That is deliberate; notification would defeat the measure's purpose.
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 and without informing you. 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.
Why foreign accounts sit outside
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 your knowledge and 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.
Where this is heading
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.