Amidst the backdrop of the Coutts banking scandal, figures obtained by the Mail on Sunday reveal that U.K. banks are on the verge of breaking account closure records, with over a million accounts shuttered in the past four years. Here’s an excerpt:
More than a million bank accounts have been shut since 2019 – and the rate of closures is accelerating, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Figures obtained under a Freedom of Information request show that banks are on track to smash the previous record of 343,500 accounts closed last year.
The alarming news comes amid the continuing fall-out from the Nigel Farage affair.
NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose was forced to quit her job last month over the closure of the former UKIP leader’s account at Coutts – the lender’s private banking arm – partly because of his political views.
Banks can shut accounts with as little as 14 days’ notice if they suspect it is being used to launder money, which would leave innocent customers financially stranded.
The Government plans to introduce new rules to give customers up to 90 days to challenge closures.
Banks will also have to explain why accounts have been closed. But campaigners and victims claim this is unfair to the thousands of innocent customers who have been de-banked despite doing nothing wrong.
“I think the legislation should go further and limit banks to closing accounts only when there is clear evidence of criminal activity,” said James Daley, founder of campaign group Fairer Finance.
The de-banking data shows that so far this year almost 200,000 bank accounts have been axed because of concerns over financial crime activity such as fraud and money laundering.
The rate of account closures has exploded from under 50,000 in 2016 when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the City regulator, introduced new reporting rules.
These require almost 250 lenders to submit an annual return of account closures.
The FCA said more monitoring by banks may explain some of the recent spike in shutdowns.
But experts say banks have become too risk-averse and rely too much on artificial intelligence to investigate and flag fraudulent behaviour.
“There has been a dumbing down of standards in the past 12 months or so, and many of those affected are in fact innocent of wrongdoing,” said Jeremy Asher of law firm Setfords.
Worth reading in full.
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I don’t go to the gulag pubs where you have recite your ID number before you can get a drink
We have our own freedom pub
Sadly not found such a pub yet where I live so they are all closed to me
I haven’t come a pub yet that is serious about the QR code stuff. Most are just going through the motions and are not strict about it. People either pretend to use it or just don’t bother.
My favourite pub is open but it has a flat, sterile atmosphere as if drinking in a shop storeroom. Mask wearing is depressingly ahered to by the regulars (not me) even if taking just three steps to and from the main door. That the landlady goes about without a mask herself does not seem register with my fellow drinkers. I find it perplexing.
Why do we continually refer to ‘as a result of the pandemic’ when it is a result of government policy – plain and simple – right?
Totally agree. I am forever correcting people on that one.
Yes. Entirely correct. The pandemic itself has caused few problems in the greater scheme of things. The hysterical overreaction, both by government and a pliant public, has caused the damage.
The government wants to engineer a situation where vaccinated people can mix as they please and therefore any difficulties economically can be blamed on those who won’t submit.
We were in LONDON for the anti Lockdown demo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stand in South Hill Park Bracknell every Sunday 10am meet fellow lockdown sceptics
Join our Telegram Group: t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
To be honest I don’t have that much sympathy. A lot of them have happily gone along with these absurd measures – what do they expect.
Part of the grand plan to crush the spirit of Brits by destroying whee we meet, where we worship, families, relationships, small businesses.
Hancocks has gone. Johnson and Gove next.
Enough is enough.
I will never comfortable in a pub – not until I can simply walk in, go to the bar, and get myself a drink. (And I promise not, unlike the Health Secretary, to get caught having a emotional rendezvous with a member of the bar staff in the cellar.)
I will never [feel] comfortable in a pub…
The working class must be crushed by the WOKEing class
It’s like watching Whales trapped on a sand bar, refusing to help themselves and go back into the sea! I just don’t care about these businesses any more, they have had fifteen months to register all the facts, if they can’t help themselves so be it. I only go to pubs where I can sit in an outside space, be served, end of. I don’t go anywhere where masks are put on for standing up etc…totally demented. Just frickin open, take the chance, advertise, block the courts up, be dammed if you lose your licence, get together and protest, just DO something!