Nobody measures exit friction: no audit of UK lock-ins
The cost of leaving a bank, a platform, a pension, a profession, a digital identity or the country is rising across UK life, and no institution measures it. Pension transfers take months and shed value, professional credentials are non-portable, debanking has no due process, government credentials are planned to be locked to the GOV.UK Wallet with certified private wallets excluded, and proposed self-custody and stablecoin rules constrain the one asset class designed for exit. Switching data exists for utilities through CMA remedies, and nothing aggregates exit friction as a civic metric across domains.
Exit disciplines institutions: banks, platforms and states behave better when leaving is cheap. A bad choice of community should stay correctable. Unmeasured, lock-in accumulates silently until it is architecture.
An annual UK exit friction index: measured switching and leaving costs across banking, pensions, platforms, credentials, identity and residence, with per-institution scores and a design standard covering data portability, wallet interoperability and credential portability. A small team could ship it in a year.
// Build now: First artefact: Exit Friction Index v1; the fill itself calls it shippable by a small team within a year.
A small team could ship the index within a year and nobody measures lock-in today; the value is diagnostic and no dated trigger forces it.
claims & evidence · 4
// each factual claim in this entry, its source, and when it was last checked. Unresolved attributions are flagged rather than hidden. Challenge any of them on the thread below.
- 217.1reportedchecked 2026-07-07Government credentials are planned to be locked to the GOV.UK Wallet, with certified private wallets excluded.Trade-press account of industry objections; DSIT's wallet policy statement is the primary source to add.
- 217.2reportedchecked 2026-07-07Proposed self-custody and stablecoin rules constrain cryptoasset exit options.Law-firm briefing; the FCA consultation papers themselves are the primary sources to add.
- 217.3source to confirmchecked 2026-07-07Pension transfers take months and shed value in the process.Industry transfer-time data, such as the Origo transfer index, is the source to add.
- 217.4verifiedchecked 2026-07-07Nothing aggregates exit friction as a civic metric across domains; switching data exists only for utilities through CMA remedies.Absence claim. Checked CMA and Ofgem switching statistics, consumer-group reporting and academic literature; no cross-domain index exists.