Bank accounts and switching banks

Mangels Deckung is the phrase on the letter telling you that a direct debit has been sent back, and its first word is a small lesson in German grammar. Mangels began life as the genitive of der Mangel, a lack, and it still behaves like one: it is a preposition that takes the genitive, from the same family as mittels and zwecks. Here the case is invisible, because Deckung stands without an article and a feminine noun has no genitive ending of its own. Add an adjective and it shows at once: mangels ausreichender Deckung. The rule has one way out. Where a plural has neither article nor adjective, nothing could carry the genitive, so German borrows the dative instead: mangels Beweisen, not mangels Beweise. The register is official — a bank, a court, an insurer. Said across a kitchen table, the same fact becomes Es war nicht genug Geld auf dem Konto.