Yorkshire Building Society closing accounts down on people with views that don't agree with their policy

[Summer2023hasarrived]

So the story goes that if you have a view on Brexit or LGBTQ?+ that isn't inline or in agreement with the people that know what view is right at The Yorkshire Building Society then they can close your account?

AIBU - stick to the day job and provide mortgages and savings

YABU - they can decide if the values of their customers don't align to shut them down

From what I can gather the banning extends to other close family members. It's frightening to be honest.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0ae0f936-178d-11ee-8fcc-23dc1e6b4441?shareToken=9ae6515845ccb8b5c7ba6725258c1a45

The UK MPs and Lords could be taken out by removing their bank accounts.

It's really not. They will only consider family members' accounts where they suspect money laundering or similar. It's too easy for people to try to avoid detection by transferring money to family members.

The other thread linked to a radio 4 discussion and apparently friends and cousins are now being refused bank accounts also, backbenchers are also being refused mortgages.

Back benchers, link please @FedgeHund

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4838848-first-direct-and-natwest-closing-bank-accounts-for-political-reasons-inc-being-gender-critical?page=11&reply=127348014

Yet if was just because they are PEP then we'd see as many left wingers as right wingers beign affected.

See this - I know Daily Mail again but it is Dominic Lawson writing from experience about the refusal of bank to open an acocunt for his disabled daughter!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12256943/Its-not-just-Nigel-Farage-daughter-blocked-opening-bank-account.html

I think @pointythings you are bing really naive and we all should be worried about this.

The Guy who runs the WingsOverScotland website, who is gender critical has had his acocunts closed withuot explanation by HSBC - https://twitter.com/WingsScotland/status/1675185927998566401 and the vicar who when asked for his opinion said somthing about pride flags has had his account close by YBS is also not a PEP.

This is serious over-reach by the banks. They may be businesses and you may think businesses can work with who they like - but there are laws about discriminating over beliefs, and banks, unlike other businesses are backed by the government with our taxation money in the form of guarantees and bailouts. We leave our money with banks because we know the governement will pays us (up to the limited amount, something like 85k) if things go wrong. Otherwise more of us would keep it under the mattress. The governement needs to act on this discrimatory practice of account closing, and fast.

The banks are not any old private business. They are to some extent under-written by the tax payer in the sense that we trust them with our money, many of us hardly having any cash in the house now, because we know the government using tax payers money will refund us if the bank crashes. This is itself unlikely because the governemnt will likely bail the banks out as in the financial crisis. So bearing in mind we ALL pay for it - all this and backing and all the regulators etc - they can provide ALL of us, whether they like us or not, with their services.

Or looking it another way @IBetGordonRamsayDoesntHaveTheseProblems why should I and any other tax payer pay for the regulation and support of banks whose politics I do not like? Where is the freedom there? No-one has a choice in that so stuff any idea the banks should have any choice the other way.

They clear answer has to be, to anyone not a naive as fuck, that banks should not flaunt their politics nor discriminate on the grounds of belief.

As people are complaing about the Daily Mail coverage here's a good piece by the consumer rights journalist Katie Morley in the Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/current-accounts/arrogant-banks-woke-keep-money-safe/

She points out all the ways banks are immoral and lacking in standards - the failure to pass on interest rates to savers, the failure to help customers who have been scammed, etc, etc.

"So yes, when it comes to morals there truly may be no-one worse to judge than the banks. They can hand out as many pronoun badges, hold as many Pride events and cancel as many Nigel Farage-types as they like, but at the end of the day customers will see it all for what it really is: virtue signalling designed to further their own money-making agenda.

The bottom line is that no-one should be denied a bank account on the basis of their views. Government intervention to stop this faux moral grandstanding cannot come soon enough. "

So it seems the original story in the DM means some don't consider it valid. However, the story has spread further afield and has also been debated on morning shows. It seems it really is a thing and not the DM making things up as some would suggest not true unless it's in The Times. 😂

What facts do you know?

No one knows why the accounts were closed down.
The only fact you know is the one that's been reported - the accounts have been closed down.
The rest is speculation - and that includes the ones in the media.

Do you know the reason the accounts were closed down?

Do you know?

I'm guessing not, or you'd have quoted your sources.

I don't know.
The point is - no one knows except the people in the bank who took the decision.

The rest is speculation.

The OP assumed it's to do with beliefs. It may be - but she doesn't know.
Nor does the DM
Or The Times
Or the customers whose accounts have been closed.

But they have jumped to a conclusion and used that to create outrage.

A conversation has started though.

Wings over Scotland checked, he isn't a PEP.

My main fear is that if we let the banks do this, how long will it be before other businesses such as water companies start to do the same.

Another thing of note is that the bank that removed Farage is partly owned by the government/taxpayer as it is part of the Natwest group. Which is even more worrying.

It may already be happening.

This is what Dentons suggested.

The noble liars pushed this and have their utopia almost in place.

https://objectnow.org/2018-7-27-yogyakarta-principles-international-threat-to-womens-rights/

BBC journalist just tweeted the following:

Simon Jack AT BBCSimonJack
Nigel Farage fell below the financial threshold required to hold an account at Coutts, the prestigious private bank for wealthy customers the BBC has been told. It also understood that he was offered a normal account at Natwest which owns Coutts. People familiar....

2/...with the matter rejected the notion that the decision to close his Coutts account was in any way political. "it was for commercial reasons - the criteria for holding a Coutts account are clear from the bank's website". Coutts requires customers to borrow or invest...

3/ £1 million with the bank or hold £3million in savings. Mr Farage recently posted a 6 minute video on Twitter saying that losing his bank account was the equivalent of being a "non person" and that the decision may "fundamentally affect my future career and whether...

4/...I can even go on staying living here in this country". Mr Farage disputed the fact that he was offered a Natwest account at the time his Coutts accounts were withdrawn. He says offer of a Natwest account came late last week. The offer of a Natwest account still stands...

5/..the BBC understands. Mr Farage says that he has tried to open an account with a number of other banks but claims he was rejected on the grounds that he is a "Politically Exposed Person" (PEP). A PEP generally presents a higher risk for financial institutions as regulators...

6/ consider PEPs more exposed to the risk for potential involvement in bribery and corruption by virtue of their position and the influence they may hold. People familiar with Natwest's thinking insisted that this not the reason for the closure of his Coutts account....

7/Mr Farage told teh BBC - "are you telling me that all the other banks say it was a PEP thing and Coutts wasn't - draw your own conclusions." Mr Farage also said that his business account for "Thorn in the Side Limited" was closed despite the fact....

8/...that last year he had what he described as "large significant positive cash balances" going through his business account. Coutts do not offer business banking services to customers who are not also private customers.

According to people who saw him - he went far, far beyond just sharing an opinion. Apparently Mr Young was being racist at the same time as he shared this opinion.

What a shocker, Farage is lying.

Farage has announced he is up to 9th bank account rejection.

Surprise, surprise.

Won't stop the frothers from carrying on about it though.

That's a great story and again perhaps the banks could sort themselves out before virtue signalling with PRIDE and various other ways.

Farage may have lied. As for the others claiming similar practices including the vicar because he complained about the number of Pride flags? Who knows. There are a number of people now reporting similar problems with banks.

As many suspected, there was more to the Farage story than he claimed.

I would be unsurprised if this is the case with all or some of the other stories shared.

It would be helpful if, for example, the vicar published a copy of the correspondence that purportedly saw his account closed. I suspect that if it was truly innocuous, it would already be in the press.

It's a common tactic called "getting ahead of the story" and allows them to control the narrative. It happens all the time in politics, celebrity news, anything you care to name really.

You know there's some news that makes you look bad and it's starting to surface. Whether that's because you've got dodgy Russian links or your account was hacked because you got a virus from a porn site or because your finances aren't as robust as you might like, and the bank has consequently shut your account.

So you get the story out first and claim you're the victim. "Fascist banks shut my account because Brexit / because I'm right wing" etc.

You know the banks won't comment. You know the story you're putting out is controversial and headline grabbing. You know your main support base is likely to swallow it and unlikely to consider any alternative explanations or indeed even consider whether your explanation is plausible. You know your narrative will be the first one people see and once that idea is in there it's generally hard to dislodge.

And then when the rather more mundane or sordid truth emerges, people won't believe it. "They're just saying that because the banks are panicking / don't want to lose money."

You get to keep your status as the poor hard-done-by martyr without suffering any of the consequences of your own actions.

Anyone with common sense and half an ounce of scepticism could have told you the Farage story was nonsense and there was likely a much more pedestrian explanation behind it. Farage lives for generating outrage and clicks.

And none of this is to say that banks don't suddenly close accounts for apparently no reason - we know it happens quite often (Monzo was a major culprit for this in the early days). In most cases it's an internal error rather than persecution of an individual - usually an automated system applying overzealous checks.