The Extended Industry Sort Code Directory (EISCD)
Minimise your organisations incidence of unpaid Direct Debits and unapplied Bacs Direct Credits by downloading up to date sort code data more frequently.
The Extended Industry Sort Code Directory (EICSD) is the new version of the Industry Sort Code Directory (ISCD) - a downloadable database containing information about all banks and building societies that are connected to the UK clearing systems. These include Bacs, Faster Payments, CHAPS Sterling and Cheque and Credit Clearing.
It contains the following information relating to bank offices or branches:
- Sort code
- Bank office identifier (BIC)
- Branch title
- Clearings the bank office participates in, including settlement information
- Postal address
- Telephone number.
Common uses of the EISCD:
- Checking account details in electronic payments, reducing the number of returned payments and the costly correction process
- Checking whether a particular bank office accepts specific types of bacs transactions
- Accessing address and telephone number information, for example, Direct Debit Instructions, with address details
- Accessing BIC information for UK bank offices.
It is possible that you may already be accessing the EISCD via your existing Bacs software solution. If you are unsure about this check with your solution supplier.
For service users not making use of the EISCD via their solution supplier, find out more about EISCD.
The quarterly fee enables you to download the data as frequently as you wish. You should download the EISCD at least once a month, however, the recommended frequency for downloading is weekly to ensure your systems have the latest possible information.
And as from the start of 2012 the time taken to add a new sort code to the EISCD will fall from 17 weeks to 6 weeks - so it's even more important to ensure you frequently take updates of the information held in the database.
Further information about EISCD and to sign up to receive downloads.