Which Business Accounts Are FSCS-Protected?

Based on FSCS deposit protection limit and FSCS temporary high balances guidance, checked October 2026.

Temporary high balance protection is built around personal life events. The FSCS lists qualifying events such as selling your main home, an inheritance, insurance payouts, retirement benefits, redundancy, divorce and compensation claims. The sale of a business isn't on that list, so if you're expecting a large one-off payment into a company account, don't assume the £1.4 million figure applies to you.

Which Business Accounts Are FSCS-Protected?

The tables below list the major business account providers in the UK market, the legal entity that holds your money and whether eligible deposits are FSCS protected. We grouped them by provider type because the type of licence, not the brand, decides your protection.

High Street and Established Banks

Checked against FSCS Bank and Savings Protection Checker and the PRA list of regulated banks in October 2026.

Digital Banks and Fintechs

Checked against provider sites in October 2026.

The "Yes, but" providers deserve a closer look:

• Tide is not a bank itself. Its current accounts are powered by ClearBank with sort code 04-06-05 and are FSCS protected, while some members still hold e-money accounts with PrePay Technologies on sort code 23-69-72, which are safeguarded instead.

• Revolut became a UK bank in 2026. The PRA approved Revolut Bank UK Ltd's exit from mobilisation on 11 March 2026, allowing it to offer FSCS-protected accounts to both retail and business customers. Revolut also said some customers signing up from that date may still be onboarded to an e-money account with Revolut Ltd, then migrated later.

• Mettle runs on NatWest's licence. Mettle's own FSCS page says the £120,000 limit applies to the combined total held across National Westminster Bank plc, NatWest Premier, Ulster Bank, NatWest Boxed and Mettle.

EMIs and Multi-Currency Accounts

Checked against provider sites in October 2026.

ANNA is a useful example of how mixed one provider's protection can be. Its main account is safeguarded under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011 and isn't FSCS protected, but its savings accounts are provided by Griffin Bank and are covered up to £120,000. In practice, that means moving money from your ANNA current account into ANNA Savings moves it from one form of protection to the other.

Our count across the three tables is 27 providers, with 19 offering FSCS protection on at least one account and 8 relying on safeguarding alone. That's broadly in line with research from Bank Solutions published in October 2026, which found 9 of the 31 business accounts it compared were e-money products.

For a closer look at how individual digital providers compare on fees and features as well as protection, our Tide vs Starling comparison and Countingup vs ANNA guide go into more detail.

Which Brands Share an FSCS Limit?

The FSCS limit applies per banking licence, not per brand. The FSCS confirms that if you hold accounts with different brands in the same banking group that share one licence, it can only protect up to £120,000 in total.

Some brands in the same group have separate licences. Royal Bank of Scotland and Coutts hold licences separate from NatWest, and Lloyds Bank holds a licence separate from Bank of Scotland and Halifax.

Is My Business Account FSCS-Protected?

You can confirm your protection in a few minutes. In our experience, the legal small print at the bottom of a provider's website is more reliable than the marketing copy above it.

1. Read the legal footer. Look for the name of the company that holds your money and whether it's described as a bank or an "electronic money institution".

2. Check your sort code. Some fintechs use different sort codes for bank and e-money accounts. Tide's e-money accounts use 23-69-72, for example.

3. Use the FSCS checker. The FSCS Bank and Savings Protection Checker lets you search by brand and shows whether it shares a licence.

4. Search the FCA register. The FCA Financial Services Register shows whether a firm is authorised to accept deposits or only to issue e-money.

5. Look for the depositor information sheet. UK banks must give you an FSCS information sheet that names every brand sharing your limit.

6. Look for the FSCS Protected badge. The FSCS rolled out a refreshed "FSCS Protected" badge in 2025 to help people identify protected banks, building societies and credit unions.

How Does Protection Work for Different Business Structures?

Your legal structure decides how many £120,000 limits you get. The FSCS looks at who legally owns the money, not whose name is on the app.

Checked against FSCS deposit protection Q&As in October 2026.

The FSCS is explicit on two points that other guides often get wrong. A sole trader's business is not treated as a separate entity, so up to £120,000 is protected in total across all personal and business accounts at the same bank, whereas a limited company or LLP gets its own £120,000 on top of the protection for individual accounts.

Individual partners can also claim up to £120,000 on personal deposits in their own names at the failed bank, separate from the partnership's own claim.

Do Big Companies Get FSCS Protection?

Yes. This is one of the most common myths we see, including on some bank and deposit platform websites. Large companies became eligible for FSCS deposit protection from 3 July 2015, and the FSCS states plainly that there is no size test, although authorised financial services firms are excluded.

The real problem for larger businesses is not eligibility; it's that £120,000 covers only a small slice of a typical corporate cash balance.

What Would Each Business Get Back?

BusinessComparison illustration based on FSCS rules as of October 2026.

How Can Sole Traders Get the Most Protection?

Sole traders have the least room to manoeuvre, because one limit covers your whole financial life at each bank. The good news is that a few practical steps can multiply your cover without changing how you run the business.

1. Bank your business and personal money on different licences. If your personal account is with Lloyds, a business account with Starling or Monzo gives you two separate £120,000 limits.

2. Keep your tax pot somewhere else. Self Assessment money builds up over months. Holding it in a business savings account on a third licence protects it separately from your day-to-day balance.

3. Check your existing relationships first. If you already hold personal savings with Halifax, a Bank of Scotland business account adds nothing to your protection.

4. Don't park reserves in an e-money account. Wise or Countingup can work well for payments, but they won't add FSCS cover.

5. Use joint personal accounts where appropriate. A personal joint account with a spouse or partner gives each named holder their own £120,000, although that money is no longer solely yours.

6. Review your balances after a strong year. In our experience, sole traders tend to set up their banking at the start and never revisit it, even after turnover has grown well past the point where the limit matters.

Should You Incorporate To Get More Protection?

Usually not. A limited company does get its own £120,000 limit, but incorporation changes how you're taxed, adds filing duties with Companies House and HMRC, and has accountancy costs.

If FSCS protection is your only reason to incorporate, spreading money across two or three banking licences achieves the same result at no cost. It's worth speaking to an accountant if you're weighing up incorporation for other reasons too.

What Are the FSCS Compensation Rules for Businesses?

The rules are the same for businesses as for individuals, with a few points worth knowing in advance.

Checked against FSCS deposit protection Q&As in October 2026.

One rule in particular trips up business owners with more than one company. If each business is a separate legal entity, each gets its own £120,000 at the same bank, but if your businesses are branches or trading names of one legal entity, they are treated as a single depositor.

Are Savings Accounts FSCS-Protected?

Yes, if the business savings account is held with a UK-authorised bank or building society. But a savings account at the same bank as your current account doesn't add protection, because both balances count towards one limit.

In our experience, business savings are where the shared-licence problem bites hardest. Specialist savings banks often sit behind fintech brands, and a business that thinks it's spread its money across three providers can find two of them are using the same bank. Before you move savings, check which licence the account actually sits on.

It's also worth weighing protection against return. If your business keeps cash at 0% in a current account, moving surplus funds into an FSCS-protected business savings account on a separate licence can improve both your protection and your interest income. Our business bank account fees guide looks at what idle cash costs in lost interest.

What Happens if You Hold More Than £120,000 With One Provider?

Anything above the limit isn't lost automatically, but it's no longer guaranteed. If your bank fails, the FSCS pays the protected amount, and the rest becomes a claim in the bank's insolvency. You'd then join the queue of creditors and receive whatever the insolvency process recovers, often in stages and over months or years.

In practice, the outcome depends on how the failure is handled:

• Sale to another bank. When Silicon Valley Bank UK got into trouble in March 2023, it was sold to HSBC for £1, so its customers, many of them tech businesses holding millions, didn't lose access to their money.

• Transfer of protected deposits. Regulators can move protected balances to a healthy bank while the rest stays in the failed one.

• Insolvency and payout. The FSCS pays up to £120,000, and an administrator handles the remainder.

The first outcome is the one everyone hopes for, but you can't plan your business around it. If your balances regularly sit above £120,000, here are your main options:

Spreading money only works if the banks are on different licences. For example, splitting £200,000 between NatWest and Mettle leaves £80,000 unprotected, exactly as if you'd held it all with NatWest.

Is Your Money Safe Without FSCS Protection?

Usually, yes. But the evidence says the gap between safeguarding and FSCS protection is real.

What Safeguarding Means in This Context

E-money institutions and payment firms don't lend your money out. Instead, they must keep customer funds separate from their own, either in a segregated account at a bank or covered by an insurance policy or guarantee. If the firm fails, safeguarded money should be ring-fenced from its other creditors and returned to customers.

The weak point is the process, not the principle. Countingup itself acknowledges that if its e-money provider became insolvent, returning your money could take longer than an FSCS claim because an insolvency practitioner would handle it, and that the administrator can deduct their costs, so you might get back slightly less than your full balance.

What the Evidence Says About Failed Payment Firms

The Financial Conduct Authority's (FCA) own data is the clearest guide to how safeguarding has worked in practice. Across the 12 payment firms that became insolvent between Q1 2018 and Q2 2023, the FCA found an average shortfall of 65% between what customers were owed and what had been safeguarded, rising to 80% for the e-money firms alone.

Those 12 failures were overwhelmingly small firms, not household names such as Wise or Airwallex, which hold billions and are subject to close FCA supervision. A 65% average shortfall at small failed firms doesn't mean a large, well-run EMI would lose 65% of your money. It does mean that safeguarding has, in practice, failed customers often enough for the regulator to rewrite the rules.

What Changed in May 2026

The FCA's new safeguarding regime came into force. The rules introduced in policy statement PS25/12 took effect on 7 May 2026, adding requirements around books and records, monitoring, reporting and safeguarding practices. Firms must now submit a monthly safeguarding return to the FCA and have a qualified auditor carry out an annual safeguarding audit.

These rules make it more likely that you'd get your money back, and back sooner, if an EMI failed. They don't turn safeguarding into a guarantee. Our view is simple: e-money accounts are a sensible tool for payments, foreign exchange and receiving international income, but your tax money, payroll reserves and rainy-day cash belong in an FSCS-protected account.

What Do UK Businesses Know About FSCS Protection?

Less than they think, according to the most recent large survey we could find. In March and April 2026, Opinium surveyed 500 finance directors and board members at UK private sector businesses with 10 or more employees, on behalf of the cash deposit platform Insignis.

The results, published in June 2026, point to a striking gap between confidence and knowledge.

Source: Insignis and Opinium, The big cash blind spot, June 2026, as reported by Business Wire and IFA Magazine.

Our Take on These Findings

The confidence gap is the real headline. Almost all respondents said they were confident their deposits were protected, yet two-thirds had no meaningful awareness of FSCS protection or what it covers. In our experience, confidence without knowledge is the most expensive position to be in, because it stops people checking.

The e-money misconception is the one that costs money. On its own, believing the limit is still £85,000 makes you more cautious than you need to be. Believing the FSCS covers fintech payment accounts does the opposite. Put that next to the FCA's 80% average shortfall at failed e-money firms, and the most common misunderstanding lines up exactly with the place where historical losses have been highest.

The survey leaves out most UK businesses. The sample only included businesses with 10 or more employees, so sole traders and micro businesses aren't represented. These are the businesses most likely to use app-based accounts, and the only group whose personal and business protection is combined. When we speak to sole traders, the shared personal and business limit is consistently the rule that surprises them most, so we'd expect awareness to be lower, not higher, among smaller firms.

Read the small print on who's publishing. Insignis runs a platform for spreading cash across banks, so it has a commercial interest in highlighting concentration risk. That doesn't make the data wrong, but it's worth knowing. Its own notes to editors also suggest larger businesses may be ineligible for the FSCS, which conflicts with the FSCS's statement that there is no size test for deposits. If a research publisher can get that detail wrong, it's no surprise that business owners do too.

Which Account Setup Is Right for Your Business?

If you're also weighing up costs, our business bank account fees comparison prices a standard year of banking across the main providers, and our Starling vs Lloyds comparison looks at the digital versus high street trade-off in detail.

When you're ready to move, our switching guide explains how the Current Account Switch Service works.

FAQs About the FSCS and Business Accounts

Are business bank accounts covered by the FSCS?

Yes, if they're held with a UK-authorised bank, building society or credit union. Eligible business deposits are protected up to £120,000 per business, per banking licence. E-money accounts aren't covered, even when they look and work like bank accounts.

Is Starling Business FSCS protected?

Yes. Starling Bank Limited holds a full UK banking licence, so eligible deposits are protected up to £120,000. Starling's EUR and USD accounts sit under the same licence and count towards the same limit.

Is Monzo Business FSCS protected?

Yes. Monzo Bank Ltd is a licensed UK bank. If you're a sole trader, your Monzo personal and business accounts share one £120,000 limit.

Is Tide FSCS protected?

It depends on your account. Tide accounts provided by ClearBank, with sort code 04-06-05, are FSCS protected. Older Tide e-money accounts provided by PrePay Technologies, with sort code 23-69-72, are safeguarded instead.

Is Revolut Business FSCS protected?

It is once your account has moved to Revolut Bank UK Ltd. Revolut launched as a UK bank on 11 March 2026 and is migrating customers in phases. Check whether your account terms name Revolut Bank UK Ltd or Revolut Ltd.

Is Wise Business FSCS protected?

No. Wise is an e-money institution, so it safeguards customer money rather than offering FSCS protection. It's a strong option for international payments, but we wouldn't recommend holding business reserves there.

Is Mettle FSCS protected?

Yes, the Mettle bank account is protected, but it shares a single £120,000 limit with NatWest, Ulster Bank, NatWest Premier and NatWest Boxed. If your business banks with both NatWest and Mettle, the combined balance is what counts.

Are ANNA and Countingup FSCS protected?

No, not on their main business accounts. Both are e-money accounts that rely on safeguarding. ANNA's separate savings account, provided by Griffin Bank, is FSCS protected.

Does the FSCS protect business savings accounts?

Yes, if the savings account is with a UK-authorised bank or building society. It shares a limit with any other account your business holds under the same licence.

Does FSCS protection cover large companies?

Yes. The FSCS confirms there is no size test for deposit protection, and large companies have been eligible since July 2015. Authorised financial services firms are the main exclusion.

Is my sole trader business account protected separately from my personal account?

No, not at the same bank. The FSCS treats a sole trader and their business as one person, so personal and business balances with the same banking licence share one £120,000 limit.

Does a partnership get £120,000 per partner?

No. A general partnership is treated as one depositor and gets one £120,000 limit for its business accounts. Each partner is separately protected for personal accounts in their own name.

Are foreign currency accounts FSCS protected?

Yes, if they're held with a UK-authorised bank. Bank multi-currency accounts, such as Starling's EUR and USD accounts or HSBC's International Business Account, fall under that bank's single limit. Multi-currency accounts from e-money providers like Wise and Airwallex aren't covered.

Does FSCS protection cover business loans, overdrafts or credit cards?

No. The FSCS protects money you've deposited, not credit you've borrowed. If a lender fails, you still owe what you borrowed under the existing terms.

How long does the FSCS take to pay a business?

Usually within seven working days for straightforward deposits. More complex claims, such as accounts held on trust, can take up to three months.

Does the FSCS cover money held in a client account?

It can. Where money is held for clients under certain trust arrangements, each eligible client may be protected separately up to £120,000. These claims take longer to process, so check the structure with your bank.

Can a business use temporary high balance protection?

Rarely. Temporary high balance protection is built around personal life events, such as selling your main home or receiving an inheritance. The sale of a business isn't on the FSCS's list of qualifying events.

What's the difference between FSCS protection and safeguarding?

FSCS protection is a statutory guarantee that pays you back up to £120,000 if your bank fails. Safeguarding is a legal requirement for e-money firms to keep your money separate from their own. Safeguarding doesn't guarantee a full or quick refund, because insolvency costs can be deducted and shortfalls can occur.

Our Summary: Which Accounts Are FSCS-Protected

Any business account held with a UK-licensed bank is FSCS-protected, and that now includes Revolut once your account has migrated. Accounts with e-money providers such as Wise, Airwallex, Countingup and ANNA's main account are not. Tide and Mettle sit in between, so it pays to check which version you hold.

The bigger risk for most businesses isn't picking an unprotected provider. It's assuming protection works per account or per brand when it works per licence. A sole trader with savings at Halifax and a business account at Bank of Scotland, or a company spreading cash across NatWest and Mettle, has less cover than they think.

• If your balances are under £120,000, any UK bank account protects you fully. Just check the licence if you hold other accounts in the same group.

• If you're a sole trader, keep your business and personal money on different licences, and put your tax pot on a third.

• If you hold more than £120,000, spread it across separately licensed banks or use a deposit platform with a bare trust structure.

• If you use an e-money account, treat it as a payments tool and keep reserves somewhere FSCS-protected.