NatWest admits ‘serious failings’ in closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts bank account
By Anna Cooban, CNN
London (CNN) — NatWest has admitted “serious failings” in its treatment of Nigel Farage, a divisive former politician and TV host whose account was closed this summer at Coutts, one of the UK bank’s subsidiaries.
An independent review commissioned by the NatWest board in July found that the decision to shutter Farage’s account had been lawful and in line with internal policies, but the bank made mistakes in how it reached the decision, handled related confidential information and communicated with Farage.
NatWest chairman Howard Davies said Friday that the company would implement all of the report’s recommendations.
Shares in the bank fell as much as 18%, before paring some of those losses to trade down 11% by 6.41 a.m. ET. NatWest also published third-quarter earnings on Friday, showing that its net interest margin — what it earns in interest minus what it pays out on deposits — had fallen from the previous quarter.
The report by law firm Travers Smith said commercial considerations underpinned the decision to close Farage’s account. Coutts had judged its relationship with the Brexit campaigner to be “significantly loss-making.”
Other factors, including worries about the reputational risk involved in keeping Farage as a client, played a role, according to the report. However, these concerns did not drive the decision, it said.
Farage, the former head of the right-wing UK Independence Party, called the report a “whitewash,” dismissing the idea that his views had not meaningfully influenced the closure of his account.
“The law firm argues that my political views ‘not aligning with those of the bank’ was not in itself a political decision. This is laughable,” he said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
He added that the word Brexit had “appeared no less than 86 times” in a request for information he had made to the bank earlier this year.
Farage, who now hosts a show on GB News, said in June that he had been dropped by a major UK bank. The lender was later revealed in UK media reports to be Coutts, a bank for the rich owned by NatWest.
The scandal led former chief executive of NatWest Group Alison Rose to step down in July after admitting to having leaked confidential details about the account’s closure to a BBC journalist, and set off a public debate about the prevalence of the “de-banking” of individuals over their political beliefs.
Following a preliminary investigation into the issue, the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority said in September that there was no evidence to suggest that any banks had, in the year to the end of June, closed a customer’s account based primarily on their political views.
‘Significant shortcomings’
The UK’s financial watchdog announced Friday that it had opened a probe into NatWest and Coutts after the Travers Smith report indicated a potential breach of regulations, including those related to the process of closing accounts and the handling of customer complaints.
“We are now reviewing how the firms’ governance, systems and controls are working to identify and address any significant shortcomings,” the FCA said in a statement.
Davies acknowledged the “serious failings” identified by the report and said the bank was making “substantive changes to our policies and procedures, in particular to ensure that the lawfully protected beliefs or opinions of customers do not play any role in our decision making.”
The UK government holds a stake of around 39% in NatWest, after it bailed out the bank’s then-parent Royal Bank of Scotland during the 2008 financial crisis.
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