§ 4-42. Terminating your account agreement: your rights as a customer
Machine-translated from Norwegian. The Norwegian text is the one that applies. Read the original in Norwegian.Norsk English العربية Polski Українська
In brief
- You can terminate your account at any time, and the notice period for consumers (forbrukere) is at most one month.
- A fee for the notice of termination (oppsigelse) itself is only allowed during the first six months of the agreement.
- You are entitled to your balance with interest, a proportionate refund of prepaid costs and information about past transactions.
The text of the law (unofficial translation)
§ 4-42. The customer's notice of termination
- to have any credit balance paid out, with accrued interest, on the account or a prepaid payment instrument (betalingsinstrument)
- to have a proportionate part of prepaid costs refunded
- to be given, or in another suitable way be given access to, information about transactions from the time before the account agreement was terminated.
What does this mean?
This section gives you as a customer the right to close your account whenever you want. You can terminate at any time. The bank and you can agree on a notice period. The bank can only charge a fee for the termination if the agreement is less than six months old. After that, it cannot charge for the termination itself.
When the account is closed because you terminated it, you are entitled to three things. You get your balance paid out with accrued interest, and this also applies to a prepaid payment instrument. If you have paid costs in advance, you are to get back a proportionate part, that is, a share corresponding to the unused time. You can also be given information about what has happened on the account before the agreement ended, or get access to it in another suitable way.
This section must be read together with the rules on the bank's own notice of termination in § 4-43. There, an objective reason is required, while you as a customer do not need any reason. Accounts with a fixed commitment period have their own arrangement in § 4-44, and there the notice period for consumers is three months instead of one. The fourth paragraph links the rule to § 3-14 on passive consent (changes to the terms apply if you do not respond). If new terms have been proposed, and a lack of consent would have given the bank the right to terminate, you can terminate immediately and at no cost before the terms take effect. The usual rules on notice periods and fees do not stop you in that case.