List of sort codes of the United Kingdom

The following list displays the very first two digits of the sort codes given to clearing banks. Thus, in the illustration 01-10-01, 01 implies that the bank is a branch of the National Westminster Bank; the other sets of digits are for internal utilization. This illustration signifies the NatWest branch in Manchester. Clearing banks can act for some other banking institutions, so searching for a bank by sort code in this list does not always signify that the bank account is really handled by that bank, e .g. The sort code 08-32-00 HMRC VAT is not a Co-operative Bank account but a Citibank bank account, as is 08-32-10 for National Insurance.
In the UK the primary digits of bank sort codes are issued to settlement members of the Cheques and Credit Clearing Company and the Belfast Bankers' Clearing Committee. These types of numbers are six digits long, formatted into 3 pairs which are set apart by hyphens.

International clearance

The British and Irish sort codes are just utilized for domestic funds transfers. If funds are being transferred across international borders, an intercontinental network is utilized. A lot of European countries make use of the IBAN as a method of identifying account numbers, but transfers to, amongst others, the USA and Australia utilize the BIC Codes. Characters 9 to 14 of British and Irish IBANs hold the bank account sort code.

In certain countries there is absolutely no direct equivalent of sort codes as the bank and branch codes are kept separately from each other in those countries. Other countries, however, have codes which are comparable to sort codes, but with formats exclusive to the country concerned.

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Examples include:

• Germany/Austria: Bankleitzahl (BLZ)
• Switzerland: Bankenclearing-Nummer (BC-Nummer)
• Spain: Codigo entidade (Codigo de banco)
• Australia: Bank-State-Branch (BSB)
• Canada: Transit Code
• France: Code banque
• Sweden: Clearingnummer
• Ukraine: MFO