Scots gender equality campaigner has bank account closed by RBS after 32 years

[IwantToRetire]

Professor Lesley Sawers and her husband Allan McKechnie have been told she has a 'mark against her name', apparently as a result of her work on gender and LGBT issues

Since the couple were put on notice they have held talks with a rival bank only to be told Prof Sawers had a "mark against her name", despite their account having a healthy balance of thousands of pounds.

There is an article about this in the Times, ie behind a paywall so this is the Scotttish Daily Express version. https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/uk-news/scots-gender-equality-campaigner-bank-30398305

Times link https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/natwest-closes-gender-equality-campaigner-s-account-83srm0d7x

This is the trouble with the social agenda at the moment. If you even question or debate the Liberal view you are cancelled and shouted down.
Everyone has opinions and should be able to voice them, stifling debate is not healthy or democratic.

It also emerged yesterday that NatWest is allowing staff to go to work identifying as men and women on different days as part of LGBT-friendly measures. The bank has offered double-sided lanyards to staff who identify as non-binary, meaning neither male nor female.

That bit reads like something out of The Onion! 😀But of course it's no laughing matter. Chuck in the Mexican drug cartels that the banks grew fat on too. And they have the front to browbeat their customers?

Never mind the EHRC, the FCA should be giving them a right kicking. Oh, wait, that would be the totally Stonewalled FCA.

Wondering about the timing of this - quite a few banks all seeming to be getting choosy about customers - I found a few pieces about the FCA tightening ESG rules in the last year.

Emphasis in the reports was about "greenwashing" environmental claims, but it's clear that they're considering stuff beyond that.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-25/esg-funds-face-uk-regulatory-crackdown-in-anti-greenwash-drive

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/uk-financial-watchdog-slams-poor-disclosures-by-esg-benchmark-compilers-2023-03-20/

From the FCA's own page:

https://www.fca.org.uk/publications/corporate-documents/strategy-positive-change-our-esg-priorities

Companies and consumers are increasingly looking beyond climate change too. They are also considering wider environmental issues, such as nature and biodiversity, as well as social and governance issues, such as diversity and inclusion, the living wage, fair taxation and supply chains. And there is growing attention on the need for a 'just transition', which considers the social consequences of the shift to a net zero economy.

Actors across the spectrum of financial services can be a force for good in this area. Institutions large and small can use their business decisions, their innovation and creativity, and their voice and their influence, to encourage positive change.

That's pretty fucking terrifying, IMO.

I agree.

Surely this a new kind of fascism?

Absolutely. Or at least totalitarianism. Strip out the point-of-view value judgements in the paragraph above, and it becomes clearer.

Actors across the spectrum of financial services can be a force in this area. Institutions large and small can use their business decisions, their innovation and creativity, and their voice and their influence, to encourage change.

Heaven forbid that they should be providing services, rather than "encouraging" change.

I'm not one to defend Farage but the amount of money he had in the bank was at the same level it had been for years. His account was closed for being a "politically exposed person" (PEP).

That's simply not true. Coutts closed his account because he didn't meet the minimum deposit/investment requirements which are around £3 million. There are numerous reports confirming this.

Have Coutts finally issued a statement confirming this or are they still in the mode of planting stories in the Press from "well-placed sources in the bank"?

Which he had had for years.

That's simply not true.

Citation needed. It may be true that "he didn't meet the minimum deposit requirements", but the same is true of a lot of people who haven't had their accounts closed, from what I read in response to that.

And there's no evidence that the reason his account was closed was that.

When someone shafts you with a term & condition it does not necessarily follow that that's the reason they're shafting you.

And why would you necessarily accept the word of the person doing the shafting? At the most you could find "confirmation" that that's what they said, but that's not confirmation of the truth. You'd have to get them to reveal their actual internal documentation. In some sort of bundle. (Did you learn nothing from the Forstater and Bailey trials?)

Have they gone through and closed all accounts without the minimum £, and done it prior to Farage? Or not?

What are the chances of them not having actually done that? If they had, there would have been a statement by now.

Subject access request? What the hell is going on? Scary stuff.

Rubbish! Where does it say you need 3 million to bank with Coutts? I must know some reticent & unassuming millionaires then.

I'm not one to defend Farage but the amount of money he had in the bank was at the same level it had been for years. His account was closed for being a "politically exposed person" (PEP).

And presumably this is what has happened in this case, and the ones mentioned up thread.

We need to find out how Banks are assessing people to be PEPs and also, on the basis that we have the right to free speech in the UK, they can use their commercial monopoly to say who can or cant operate in the UK.

If someone who is an Equalities and Women's Rights commissioner is a PEP where does that leave us.

The ignorance on these threads is staggering. So, in easy to understand dot points:

• The category of PEP is subject to objective, internationally agreed definitions, and encompasses all elected politicians, heads of civil service, leaders of political parties, generals, diplomats, and senior figures in international bodies such as the EU or UN. Being a PEP is not something assessed by banks; it’s either true or not.
• No-one is offboarded for being a PEP; all it means is that, as a bank customer, you will be subject to enhanced customer due diligence, designed to identify evidence of bribery and corruption.
• Offboarding is different from having an account closed. The former means you can never hold an account at an institution ever again, the latter for all kinds of reasons, mostly commercial.
• Banks can never make public the reasons for account closures or offboarding, because that would be illegal.
• It would also be illegal for a bank to share information on this with other banks, so getting shut out of the banking system is not a thing, unless you are an individual subject to international sanctions.

The ignorance on these threads is staggering.

No need to be patronising. Most of dont work in banking and rely of supposedly reliable news sources ie fact checked (the BBC) to report accurately. If what you say is true then I suggest you go and lecture the BBC.

And be considerate enough to contribute to a thread on FWR and say for those who dont know a PEP is ...

Which by the way implies that Farage has also been "misled" about that (or that credit checking services are ripping people off!).

Then internal documents got leaked and it turned out that Farage was right and that it's the bank's story that is pure bullshit.

Quoting:

https://news.sky.com/story/coutts-bank-hits-back-amid-nigel-farage-account-row-12924062

In a new statement issued on Thursday, a Coutts spokesperson acknowledged the "substantial interest" in the Farage case but said it could not comment in detail because of customer confidentiality obligations.

However, they stressed "it is not Coutts' policy to close customer accounts solely on the basis of legally held political and personal views".

Coutts added: "Decisions to close an account are not taken lightly and involve a number of factors including commercial viability, reputational considerations, and legal and regulatory requirements.

So firstly, they don't seem to have given an official statement on why they closed the account.

They however speak in general, and suggest that they don't close accounts because of political views. But that's potentially misleading, as it goes on to speak of "reputational considerations".

So as I read it, they have basically admitted that they could have closed his account because of his political views and the perceived reputational risk to themselves.

And that exact issue is mentioned by the bank in their internal documents on him!

See:

https://www.gbnews.com/news/nigel-farage-coutts-report-screenshots-bank-claim

I'm puzzled. I haven't seen any comment raise the question, sorry if I missed it, but what have the banks done with the money in the accounts they closed? Has NF had to roll up in a taxi for £3m worth of notes, take it home and store it in his mattress? Likewise the Scottish guy? Or have the banks still got their thievish hands on it? They obviously can't issue a cheque or draft if there is no receiving bank.

I agree. It is completely out of hand and perfectly reasonable people are at risk.

From reports by people who have had this happen, the banks make it extremely difficult to return the money. Even though they decided to close the account, they essentially cut you off from your own money and you have to fight to get it back. On top of not having anywhere that you can deposit a cheque because they have put a black mark on you so you can't open other accounts.

And not being able to get the cash out because it is over their daily limit.

I'd love to know how much money the banks have retained from customers whose accounts they closed, put black marks against and so unbanked, un future banked and then not allowed them to take out the money.

How lefties are celebrating this unethical and atrocious behaviour is beyond me, but it seems left is the new right.

Just in case it hasn’t been mentioned already, RBS is owned by NatWest. Coutts is also owned by NatWest. The Telegraph and DM have already published the Coutts document which makes it clear that the decision to remove accounts from NF was NOT to do with his financial position (although the BBC journalist reporting last week had, unaccountable, not read it) and Alison Rose (NatWest CEO) has already made a written apology for the bank’s treatment of NF. All discussed & referenced on a previous thread

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4852175-could-you-be-de-banked-for-being-gender-critical?page=8&reply=127795972

V interested to see if there is a similar document related to this incident. Hoping that Dame Alison Rose will quickly get fed up with spending so much of her time on these things & get some proper, legal processes in place. It is astonishing and disturbing that banks, and indeed other service providers are discriminating against people based on their lawful political views. Agree with pp’s who say gov needs to get on top of this asap

This is all very Black Mirror.

I wonder if the Government will end up providing a basic account that everybody can hold. You cant' function in life at all if you can't have a bank account.

There used to be one - National Girobank.

It was privatised in 1989 - 1990.

Someone could try asking Keir Starmer to set up a new People:s Bank. Chance of success close to zero, mind. And even if he did, the wrongthink rules would be even more egregious than those of the NatWest bunch.