News

Charity Finance Group (CFG), the UK's leading membership organisation for charity finance professionals, has published a new guide for charities.

The guide is a practical toolkit designed for small to medium-sized charities. Its aim is to support those charities that need to raise an issue or concern with their banks.

The guide’s development was a practical response to the results of research conducted by CFG and sector partners in 2024. The report – Charity Banking Challenges 2024¹ – showed that more than half of charities had made a complaint to their bank which had not been satisfactorily resolved.

New research² in July 2025 from the Charity Commission has also shown that two out of five trustees have encountered a banking issue in the past year.

The new CFG guide sets out step-by-step how to raise an issue or concern, provides background information on ‘know your client’ and ‘anti-money laundering’ requests, and contains handy email templates for different types of communications.

Dr Clare Mills, Deputy CEO, CFG, comments:

“This resource is one that we hope is never needed – in an ideal world, communication with your bank and access to banking services would be easy, seamless and effective.

“However, we know from numerous conversations over recent years, and our research with NCVO and Civil Society Group last year, that that isn’t always the case. Strikingly, more than half of our survey respondents said that complaints to their bank had not been resolved to their satisfaction.

“This practical toolkit has been designed with satisfactory resolution in mind, and hopefully to help charities resolve issues quickly without needing to turn to formal complaints procedures or the Financial Ombudsman Service. We hope it’s helpful and welcome all feedback for future editions.”

Download ‘Communicating with your bank: raising an issue or concern’

Editor’s notes

Reports

1. Charity Banking Challenges 2024, 27 November 2024, CFG/NCVO/Civil Society Group
2. Research with trustees 2025, 8 July 2025, Charity Commission for England and Wales

About CFG

CFG is the charity and membership organisation that supports other charitable organisations to make the biggest difference possible. We do this by helping them to make their money and resources go further, by putting financial leadership at the heart of their decision-making. Since CFG was founded in 1987, we have evolved to welcome all finance professionals working for charitable and social change organisations. We also welcome non-finance professionals who recognise that we deliver greater impact when we are financially confident, trustworthy and dynamic. Today, CFG’s vibrant community manages around one third of the UK’s entire charity sector income. We are a diverse and inclusive community of people who are passionate about delivering impact through financial leadership. Together, we lead the way for charity finance.

Contacts

Emma Abbott, Communications Manager, CFG: emma.abbott@cfg.org.uk

Glyn Sheldon, Communications Officer, CFG: glyn.sheldon@cfg.org.uk