Switch FX provider without missing a settlement

Can we keep our bank while we test a new FX provider?

Yes, and you should. Nothing at your bank needs to close. Your client bank accounts, premium receipts and claims payments carry on exactly as now while the new provider proves itself on small payments.

Opening an account with a specialist provider changes nothing at your bank. The new account is used first for test payments, then for one real flow, then for the rest. The old route stays live throughout, so any flow can go back to it if a test fails.

Before you start, find every place your current bank details are written down. Binding authority agreements, terms of business agreements with insurers, debit note and invoice templates, standing settlement instructions held by markets and the payment set-up in your claims system may all carry them. That list becomes your update plan later.

Flows that settle through Lloyd's central accounting and settlement are converted there according to managing agents' standing instructions, and they are not part of a switch. This plan is for the flows that run through your own bank accounts.

A second live route also limits the damage if a provider fails. Argentex LLP, an FCA-authorised payment and e-money institution with FX clients, entered special administration on 21 July 2025. Firms that already had a second provider onboarded had somewhere else to send their payments while the administration ran.

What does a staged switching plan look like?

Seven stages over roughly 12 to 16 weeks: baseline, settlement calendar, quotes, compliance sign-off, onboarding, testing, then moving flows one at a time and reviewing the result.

Firms with several entities, many coverholders or a large client money book often take longer at the compliance and onboarding stages. Nothing in the plan needs your bank account to close early, so a slow stage delays the move rather than a settlement.

In what order should we move premiums, remittances and claims?

Start with your firm's own money and the flows with no fixed date. Leave premium collection and remittances to capacity until the new route has proved itself and compliance has signed off.

1. Expenses and supplier payments

   Your firm's own money, paid in other currencies: overseas offices, service companies, loss adjusters' fees, software and data. A missed cut-off here is an inconvenience, not a breach of a binder.

2. Commission and brokerage conversions

   Converting your own income to sterling. A good early test of how the provider prices regular flows once the account is live.

3. Claims payments

   Start with small payments in your main claim currencies, then larger ones and less common currencies. If the claims money is client money in your hands it waits for the compliance sign-off like any other client money flow.

4. Reinsurance premiums and recoveries

   Moved outside settlement weeks and away from the main renewal dates, with the old route kept live for any cash call.

5. Premium conversions and remittances to capacity

   Last, and only once your compliance officer has signed off the client money position for those flows and the capacity providers' receiving details have been confirmed through their own verified process.

Which settlement dates can we not miss during a switch?

Binder remittance dates, quarter-end premium accounts, reinsurance account settlements and cash calls, claims payment runs and your month-end client money calculation. List them for the next six months before you move anything.

Put the dates in one shared calendar with an owner for each. The rule is simple: a flow never moves in the same week as one of its own fixed dates, and the old route stays open until the next date has passed cleanly on the new one.

How do we update collection details with insureds, coverholders and markets safely?

Only through channels they already trust, with verification by phone on a number they already hold. Payment diversion fraud is the main risk in any switch, and InsuranceFX never sends payment details.

First check whether the details need to change at all. Before any premium collection details point to a new account, your compliance officer must confirm how that account fits your client money position. CASS 5 generally requires client money to be held in a client bank account at an approved bank, so for many brokers and MGAs the collection details may not change. Our page on client money, CASS 5 and FX sets out the questions to ask.

Where details do change, fraudsters watch for exactly that moment. A switch gives them a reason to send a convincing email with new bank details, so every change goes out in a form they cannot easily copy:

• Producing brokers and coverholders: a letter on your letterhead signed by an authorised person, sent by post or through the secure portal you already use, asking them to confirm by calling a number from their own records.
• Insureds: new details on the debit note or invoice only after test receipts have arrived, with a printed line saying you will never change bank details by email.
• Insurers and capacity providers: if they pay you claims, recoveries or commission, their standing settlement instructions for you are updated through their own verification process. If you pay them, their details do not change, so treat any message saying otherwise as suspect.
• Reinsurers and reinsurance brokers: new settlement instructions from the next account onwards, through the broker's verified process, not in the middle of an account.
• Claims payees: claimants' and suppliers' bank details confirmed from your claim file records. Any request to change them during the switch is suspect until verified by phone.
• The old account: keep it receiving until nothing more arrives there, and agree with compliance how late payments to it are handled.

Record who approved each change, when and how it was verified. Your auditors and your capacity providers may ask.

What does our compliance officer need to sign off before we switch?

The client money position for every flow that will move, the provider's regulatory status and safeguarding, and any binder or TOBA terms that name an account or a currency.

• Which flows are client money, which are held under risk transfer and which are your firm's own money, flow by flow.
• Whether any client money flow can use the new provider at all, and on what basis. That is for your compliance officer and CASS auditor to decide. Neither InsuranceFX nor the provider can decide it for you.
• The provider's FCA authorisation type and firm reference number on the FCA Register, and how it safeguards customer money.
• Binding authority agreements and terms of business agreements that name a bank, an account or a settlement currency, and whether capacity providers or insurers need to be told.
• How the provider's statements will feed your client money calculation and reconciliation.
• Sanctions. The provider screens the payments it makes. Your firm keeps its own sanctions obligations as an insurer, broker or claims handler, including for the people and firms you pay claims to. The Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation publishes the official guidance.
• Board or committee approval where your governance requires it, with the sign-off recorded.

Which approvals and payment controls need setting up on the new account?

At least the controls you have today, set up before the first live payment: two-person approval, beneficiary approval, limits that match claims authority and a full audit trail.

• Dual authorisation for every payment and conversion, with limits by user and by amount.
• Payment limits that mirror your claims authority levels, so nobody can release a payment on the new route that they could not approve on the old one.
• Separation between the people who set up claims payees and the people who approve payments.
• Beneficiary approval, so a new payee needs a second person before money can go to it.
• Strong sign-in for every user, and leavers removed on the day they go.
• Payment confirmations with references your claims system and claim files can hold.
• Statements in a format credit control and the client money reconciliation can load without rekeying.
• A named contact at the provider and an escalation route for a payment stuck on a settlement date.

What does InsuranceFX do at each stage of a switch?

We do the comparison and the organising. The provider does everything that touches money. Your firm makes the decisions and keeps responsibility for its client money compliance.

Many firms come to us because their rate has crept up since they signed. Our guide to FX rate creep shows how to check. MGAs will find binder-specific detail on our page for MGAs and coverholders.

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