140,000 business accounts were closed by UK banks last year.

The information came from a Treasury Committee investigation into the availability of sufficient funding for SMEs.

Based on data from Barclays, HSBC, TSB, Lloyds, Santander, NatWest, Metro, and Handelsbanken, the figures were calculated.

Businesses have been de-banking for a variety of reasons, such as risk tolerance, worries about financial fraud, a lack of information exchange, and others.

"One of the most startling pieces of evidence emerging from our inquiry into Access to Finance for small and medium-sized business is the readiness of lenders to close business bank accounts with little or no notice," says Harriett Baldwin, chair of the Treasury Committee.

Different lenders classify causes for closing accounts in different ways. For instance, while TSB divided its statistics into two categories—specifying only financial crime and "where a business has been unable to satisfy verification requirements or has not responded to our attempts to contact them"—Barclays divided its account closure data into six categories.

Out of 4,214 incidents, just three banks cited "risk appetite" as the cause of bank closures.

Baldwin states: "These numbers show that thousands of small businesses are unable to obtain bank accounts because they do not meet their bank's criteria of risk appetite. By making this data public, I intend to ensure that banks' decisions are scrutinized more closely and that genuine firms are not subjected to unfair treatment.