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.