Does your account have an IBAN and a BIC?

IBAN stands for International Bank Account Number and is an internationally accepted numbering system that identifies individual bank accounts worldwide. Banks use IBANs to process money transfers and ensure payments arrive in the correct location.

In the UK, IBANs consist of 22 characters and include the country code, check digits, bank code, sort code, and bank account number.



1 – Country code – 2 letters
The first two letters represent the country where your bank is located. This is “GB” for United Kingdom.

2 – Check digits – 2 digits
The next two digits are check digits. These are calculated with an algorithm and used to validate the correctness of the IBAN.

3 – Bank code – 4 characters
This four-character code identifies the bank.

4 – Bank branch – 6 digits
This six-digit sort code identifies the bank branch.

5 – Bank account number – 8 digits
Lastly, the account number is listed and is a maximum of eight digits. Generally, shorter account numbers are left-justified and preceded by zeros to make them eight digits.


BIC stands for bank identifier code; it's a unique identifier for a specific financial institution. A BIC is composed of a 4-character bank code, a 2-character country code, a 2-character location code and an optional 3-character branch code

This is all you need to provide KLM to receive compensation. Your bank statement should show both; your IBAN may even be on your debit card; if not, check in your online banking account, or ask your bank for assistance in locating the IBAN and BIC for your current account. This is NatWest's instructions for finding your IBAN and BIC, for example.