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, 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, excluding certified private wallets; proposed self-custody and stablecoin rules constrain the one asset class designed for exit. Switching data exists for utilities (CMA remedies) but nothing aggregates exit friction as a civic metric across domains.

'The penalty for selecting a bad community should not be a life sentence in that community.' Exit is what disciplines institutions: banks, platforms and states alike behave better when leaving is cheap. Unmeasured, lock-in accumulates silently until it is architecture.

An annual UK Exit Friction Index: measured switching/leaving costs across banking, pensions, platforms, credentials, identity and residence, with per-institution scores and a design standard (data portability, wallet interoperability, credential portability). A publishable research product a small team could ship 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 this index within a year and nobody measures lock-in today, but the value is diagnostic and no dated trigger forces it now.