The Payments Council has also introduced a best practice recommending businesses and banks refresh their reference data weekly; whilst smaller businesses should ensure their data is updated at the very least on a monthly basis.
Also, sort codes for Northern Ireland branches of banks registered in both Northern Ireland and the Republic, are valid, and recognized for use in the Republic. Although there is a strong correlation between BIC Codes and sort codes, sort codes are not explicitly encoded into BIC codes (although they are encoded into IBANs).
Weekly updates ensure you have the most up-to-date UK payments information on the market.