Re: The Bank of Farage
 

You are right, snobbery is the key in this. Coutts have a very specific business model and I suspect the likes of Farage are counter to the customer profile they are wanting to foster. He is the antithesis of a discreet, high net-worth individual and they have responded appropriately.

---------- Post added at 15:23 ---------- Previous post was at 15:12 ----------

Apparently from Coutts memo:

Seems fair to me ...

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I have absolutely no sympathy for the man.I don't even have a teeny,weeny violin for him.As far as I can see he's achieved absolutely nothing in life unless being an absolute bellend is an achievement on it's own.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

You'd be quite good at epitaphs Maggy ;)

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

What beliefs? He only believes in self promotion, bit like his orange buddy.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Even if that was true, still no grounds. Plus I have to keep pointing out that OTHER banks have ALSO closed the accounts of OTHER people who had the "wrong" opinions.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

You are ignoring that he’s a politically exposed person, this brings administrative and regulatory burdens that banks might be selective about.

As for the others there’s limited, anecdotal evidence. There’s the bigot that wrote to the bank to complain about rainbow flags. Now I’m old school, if I didn’t like the way a company was operating I’d be leaving them, I’d not be writing expecting them to stop virtue signalling and wait for them to boot me out.

NatWest plc have repeated today their offer of banking services to Farage through their retail banks. It’s difficult to see how he could be considered “blacklisted” for his political views.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

The rainbow flags served no purpose, other that to promote the agenda of the real bigots.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I think they're quite pretty. We're a diverse culture. Be proud of it old chap :)

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Except that they have admitted doing just that.

The bus company that runs my bus service is provided by a Labour-run council. So, in your view of the world, me being a Conservative, I should be banned from using the service.

I will never understand your logic, jfman!

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Not at all, NatWest plc are offering him a bank account.

The train is a better fit for an analogy. You want to sit in first class but the company has decided they will only offer a standard class seat. It still gets you to the same destination. You just have to sit with the plebs.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

As usual, you are missing the point. Coutts have admitted throwing him out due to his political views. THAT is the point, which you don’t care to answer.

Just admit it and let’s move on.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

They haven’t said that at all. They’ve identified he’s a politically exposed person - something that according to his own claims has resulted in a handful of banks all rejecting him.

It suits his acolytes to continue the pretence he’s some kind of innocent victim. In reality, he’s merely been reprofiled within the NatWest portfolio of products and services.

As the forum’s leading free market capitalist, I’m aghast that you are trying to mandate one of our Great British institutions into proceeding in transactions it doesn’t want, and pushing for further red tape that can only make them less competitive against their EU competitors.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

:rolleyes:

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Come on OB you must recognise this is the thin end of the wedge. Once they legislate for a "basic" bank account that everyone must provide, regulate the interest, the charges under the guise of "essential" what's next? Regulating the energy price? Broadband? Bringing water back into public ownership?

A dystopian nightmare.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I'm sure the local Conservative Club would throw me out for my political views, but I wouldn't scream and scream until I was sick (even though I could), infact I wouldn't care less.

You would have thought banking with the great unwashed would fit in with the man of the people beer and fags image he tries to project anyway.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Old Boy, Coutts have done no such thing. Asking someone else to go along with this myth is a tad hopeful. Here's a snippet from the dossier via The Times.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1689806440

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

While this may all be true, its also a bit of a dodgy road to be going down. I expect the people supporting the bank, saying they can discriminate who they do business with, are the same people who attacked a bakery for exercising their right not to do business with a gay couple.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Coutts is finished.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

So no purpose for a bank, other than pointless virtue signalling?

---------- Post added at 08:53 ---------- Previous post was at 08:49 ----------

What about the "but one centred around inclusivity and Purpose" bit? In other words having "unauthorised" opinions.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

:tu:

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

tbf, the banks have form on this sort of thing…

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...no-explanation

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-28553921

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...aundering-laws

https://www.theguardian.com/money/20...omers-accounts

---------- Post added at 09:23 ---------- Previous post was at 09:22 ----------

In your words…

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He always tries to portray himself as the victim.

Strange that a man who tries to portray himself as a fag and beer man is really full of bullshit and fake sincerity.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

No idea what they mean by "Purpose" but it may be explained in the dossier.

Presumably by "inclusivity" they feel that Coutts' association with Farage may deter some people banking with them and they've decided that the potential profit from those people outweighs the potential profit from retaining Farage. That's the private banking business for you. It's not about unauthorised opinions as I'm sure banks won't be aware of most customers' opinions. But if you're a public figure who courts controversy and offends sections of the population then you may not be a good fit for a traditional private bank.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

In THEIR words.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He's a clever shock jock and making a good living out of it. Credit where it's due, he's made the most out of his huge personality.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

No idea what they mean by "Purpose" but it may be explained in the dossier. Presumably by "inclusivity" they feel that Coutts' association with Farage may deter some people banking with them and they've decided that the potential profit from those people outweighs the potential profit from retaining Farage. That's the private banking business for you.[/QUOTE]
So certain people who go on and on about "inclusivity", want certain other people excluded? Not very inclusive. Bit like referring to some people as "Terfs".
A central point is that the banks shouldn't be looking into the opinions of people. The whole tone of the report exudes bias, using terms and references from biased sources.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

So if not based upon his opinions, why did they have a LONG discussion on his opinions? Why mention so much on what is supposedly never going to be part of the decision? Completely contradictory.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

The night before the BBC ran a story claiming Coutts de-banked Farage for commercial reasons, the BBC’s business Editor Simon Jack was sitting next to NatWest CEO Alison Rose at a charity dinner.

The Torygraph is going hard on the insinuation that Rose whispered something in Jack’s ear.

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%...tweet-claim%2F

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I was thinking about this today in the shower where I have my best thoughts…

For us plebs, we decide to go with a certain supplier at least partially due to that suppliers brand. The key question is does that suppliers brand match my values and aspirations? Companies like Apple and Waitrose carefully maintain their brands as the high end option for example even if objective analysis might show other options to be better.

If the brand is strong enough, we can do little to influence it apart from walking away. Of course, if enough customers walk away, a change in the brand might be needed but on an individual level, we either accept what is offered or not. If we don’t walk away, we have endorsed that brand implicitly.

What is different here is Nigel Farages brand is incredibly strong. Like him or not, he has very carefully cultivated his position to appeal to a lot of people. The strength of his brand is such that the customer-supplier relationship has flipped round with Nigel Farage being the senior partner. If Coutts continued their relationship then they implicitly endorse Nigel Farages brand and that’s a direction that they clearly didn’t want to take

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Great post, I think you've hit the nail on the head.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

In the Bank’s words

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

As far as Coutts is concerned, I really don't know what the fuss is all about. He was dropped for commercial reasons i.e. he is so toxic he would jeopardise new customers.

From Nov 22:

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2023/07/1.jpg

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

And all the other pages in the document? If that was the case, why the need for all the other pages filled with biased nonsense? They closed his account, there and then, not at some point in the future. Even then, the sensible business decision would be to warn somebody that they were at risk of no longer being eligible, so they had the chance to be prepared to move accounts or perhaps to pay more into the account in order to still qualify.
It was a review aimed at a PERSON, not an account. How was that PERSON selected for review in the first place?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He was given notice his accounts were being closed. They weren't closed in November 2022.

Just because you're a Farage Fan and don't agree with Coutts' analysis does not make it biased nonsense.
He was a poltically-exposed person so would be flagged by software on the bank's CRM taken from PEP lists. Then the bank would monitor his press.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Andrew Neil has been going over the ‘dossier’ of Coutts internal discussions about how to get rid of Farage’s accounts and they are not nearly as dispassionate as you’re making them out to be.

Killer quotes: “… his publicly stated views … are at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation.”

“… not a political decision but one entered around inclusivity and purpose.”

The documents also show that Coutts planned to use the final paying down of his mortgage, which was due to occur this month, as the pretext for closing his accounts, on the basis that he was no longer a “criteria client” (not borrowing or investing enough). The discussion about his views as the real reason for de-banking him was not supposed to get out.

Had they intended to use perfectly understandable, industry-wide criteria about political exposure as the reason to de-bank him, you would have thought they could have just been up-front and said so. It’s clear, however, that they attempted to hide their disapproval of his views behind the natural winding-down of his mortgage.

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/16...56-Kgau3lzowJw

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Could it not equally be considered that they weighed up the merits of retaining him despite not meeting their criteria?

The final payment on his mortgage is the point where he no longer met the criteria. It doesn’t need to be a pretext for anything - it’s the exact moment it’s appropriate to bin him under their own rules .

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

None of that supports the argument that the document was "filled with biased nonsense" which is the point I was contesting with Nomad.

I've previously posted and discussed the section that referred to inclusivity and Purpose.

I agree that based on the above, they should have been upfront with him. However, as jfman says, there's a good case to be made that he no longer met their criteria once the mortgage was paid off so they would have been correct in closing his accounts. If so, why throw petrol on the fire by talking about Purpose an inclusivity?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I think we’re way beyond the optics of this now though. Yesterday I was leaning towards old-fashioned upper class snobbery as the reason for wanting to get rid of Farage, the sort of person a snooty-nosed upper class twit might snort at and call an ‘odious little oik’ or somesuch. It now looks very much as if the fault line lies between the socially conservative and socially liberal views that divide this country (those on one side shout ‘woke’ at the other, the others shout back ‘gammon’).

‘Inclusivity and purpose’ isn’t about Farage’s connection with Trump, Putin or Brexit per se, but the social views Coutts believe are driving him. Alarm bells should be ringing here for all of us, because there is now an entirely plausible claim that the bank tried to bin him for his association with certain social/political causes. If that’s the case we need to be thinking long and hard about the extent to which we allow major corporations to police the socio-political views of the population.

---------- Post added at 12:32 ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 ----------

Except that there is clearly a lot of flexibility over how the ‘rules’ are applied once you have a foot in the door, and there is no evidence that his finances flagged up on any automatic system designed to draw attention to accounts that no longer met those rules.

They were *looking* for reasons to bin him, and while their own rules on investment/borrowing were actually adequate reasons for doing so, they were not the reasons that drove the process, nor were they the ones that sealed his fate.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

So what proportion of the document wasn't biased nonsense? Eg "Team uncovered adverse press." and goes on to list some of them. How many of their high-profile clients wouldn't have "adverse press"?
Link

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Surely that’s for them to manage for those that don’t meet the criteria.

I fear for the future of the British state as a chumocracy if we start telling exclusive institutions they have to let anyone in.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

In terms of adverse press:
- Most of Coutts' clients would try and avoid the press so would have no adverse press.
- High-profile clients would probably have some adverse press
- But shock jocks like Farage who make a living from courting controversial opinions are going to have more adverse press about them.

---------- Post added at 12:46 ---------- Previous post was at 12:42 ----------

I think jonbxx nails it here

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He can always bank with NatWest…

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

So we have no need to worry that a major corporation thinks it’s its job to police our politics because we’re not important enough to be noticed? Colour me reassured. Not.

There’s a question of principle here, not least because how corporations treat well known holders of certain opinions can have a chilling effect lower down the ladder of celebrity. We can’t have a situation develop where businesses get to decide which social views are articulated or are acceptable. If nothing else, businesses, particularly large, public listed ones, have no intrinsic morals or social views outside of what they think works best with their marketing strategy. It’s a dangerously capricious state of affairs which shouldn’t be allowed to become normalised.

---------- Post added at 12:55 ---------- Previous post was at 12:55 ----------

You’re wilfully missing the point.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

No, one of his main points was that he couldn’t get a bank account.

Coutts appear to have decided that, as a bank who are a byword for discretion, the potential downside of having a professional self-publicist whose main aim in life seems to be to stir up outrage, wasn’t worth the effort.

Let’s see what the FCA investigation brings about - but I’m pretty sure that if it finds no fault in the process, more faux-victimisation will result.

Strange how all Osborne’s stories about peoples’ bank accounts being closed were ignored, but this story is being blown up out of all proportion (imho) - I wonder what the difference could be?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Farage certainly did himself no favours with all the hyperbolic nonsense about being totally excluded from the banking system when the story first broke. But the dossier of internal Coutts debates over how to get rid of him do them no favours either. Farage’s public profile has been far higher than it is now. If they wanted to use a fairly industry-standard measure of political exposure to get rid of him then they could have done it years ago.

The questions we have to hope the FCA answers are, why hide their social-political reasons behind their financial criteria, and why now?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

What’s the point of running an exclusive institution if you don’t have some flexibility around who is (or isnt) an appropriate person.

I’m quite sure when mortgages end it flags on systems in advance and they don’t continue in perpetuity until someone notices.

Considering his views have been well known for so long they randomly came up with the idea and chanced upon the fact he’d no longer meet the criteria in a small number of months.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Politics shouldn't be a reason. It's a really dangerous and dodgy ground to be on. I could understand if it's someone universally accepted as beyond the pale, if a white nationalist KKK member wanted it then I think we can accept that, but Farage is well within the standard spectrum of political opinion.

Also, I imagine a lot of PEP-flagged people bank with Coutts so that clearly isn't a reason.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I didn’t say politics was the reason. I only responded to the observation that there’s flexibility as if that’s some kind of shock.

If he (or anyone) doesn’t meet their criteria it’s up to them how they manage their reputation and brand. That’s surely a basic premise of the free market, especially if someone is vocal about the fact they use your products or services.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

The offer came AFTER his account was closed and AFTER several other banks turned him down.

---------- Post added at 16:23 ---------- Previous post was at 16:22 ----------

Define "vocal". Is that mentioning it once or frequently?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

That’s the story here, 52% of the country voted for Brexit - the greatest democratic mandate in the history of this great nation so I hear - yet every single bank he goes to turns him down for political reasons. Doesn’t add up.

It wouldn’t be for me to dictate to capitalist enterprises who value their reputations. They can do that themselves using their entrepreneurial spirit.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/nig...ad-2023-07-04/ (July 4th 2023)

Not "after his account was closed", but when he was told his accounts were going to be closed…

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

BREAKING: NatWest CEO Apologises to Farage for ‘deeply inappropriate comments’ on documents outlining why his account was closed.

---------- Post added at 17:41 ---------- Previous post was at 17:35 ----------

Do most of you feel stupid in this thread?

Some of you ought to be, given that grovelling apology to him just released. :rolleyes:

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Not really to be honest, I already pointed out it was unwise for them to have written it down. Given the threat of regulation, and political interest at the highest level, it’s no surprise someone has decided to play the game with an apology.

A sincere apology would have went out with the documents, which would almost certainly have been viewed at the very highest level before they were released to Farage given it was obvious he would go public with them.

The best bit is the “apology” offers him a NatWest account :rofl:

Top trolling.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I’m sorry, lots of you have egg on your faces. All your old posts tells me so.

Any way here’s a link to it: https://news.sky.com/story/nigel-far...t-row-12924414

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

No egg here, Mick. Just lots of laughter. He’s clearly below the threshold and they’re doubling down by apologising for writing down he’s a racist and a xenophobe rather than just keeping it to themselves.

Almost everyone would unanimously agree it’s bad customer service to insult a customer to their face.

He’s still not got a Coutts account, and despite a lot of social media grumbling it doesn’t look like he will get one.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Well he should & yes you have egg on your face.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

The only person with egg on his face is Farage, who since his banking status is too dubious for several other banks in the UK will almost certainly have to take NatWest up on their offer.

You won’t find a single post where I’ve claimed anything other than he doesn’t meet the thresholds, something Coutts says and he doesn’t deny.

I’m dubious about regulating an entire sector on the basis of one upset man. Freedom and all that.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Laughable. Still can’t bring yourself & your pathetic hatred to bare. It’s victory for Farage here.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

We’re through the looking glass here, Mick. If this is a victory for Farage then I’m more than happy for him to have it.

Sorry we called you those names, Nige. We didn’t mean it, honest.

I’d certainly be in no rush as a consumer to engage with a company that called me a disingenuous grifter, but each to their own.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He may have "victory", but he doesn’t have a Coutts Bank account…

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Even if they backed down now, imagine every time he has to engage with them. They’d be laughing at him behind his back.

“Here’s the disingenuous grifter, who doesn’t have the money, but every other bank declined to take him on so he cried to the press.”

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

For now.

You too can remove that egg from your face.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I must reiterate my previous comments on the egg status of my face.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Not sure what you are referring to?

The only negative comment I made about Farage in this thread was

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

It was the smart arse reply about him not having a bank account, like that is okay.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I agree. Together with his Shag-athon (his 1st wife, second wife (and advisor @98K, £40million from Deliveroo IPO)), Emily (now succeeded him as editor of the Evening standard) plus the sister in law of Cameron --all 4 concurrently apparently).

On top of this you (Hugh) accidently posted a twitter link that has an under age sex allegation.

Teflon?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

So that's how he keeps thin. Not a bad keep fit plan !
He suffers from a bad back though, so there's always a downside....

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Sorry, that should have been Oborne, not Osborne - darn autocorrect

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Whether or not he still has a Coutts account,was NEVER the issue. it was the WHY. How much of the 40 pages was spent discussing financial eligibility?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Has it been published in full anywhere? Or are we relying on excerpts c/o Farage?

40 pages would amount to thousands, if not the low tens of thousands, depending on formatting. I’ve only read a few paragraphs as an excerpt - a few hundred words in total max.

Equally a straightforward fact, yes or no, wouldn’t need many words regardless of the weighting it is given in the decision making process.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Don't think one man's bank account is the biggest issue facing the country atm, though some media outlets and political parties would have you believe it is.

Same with the Schofield or Huw Edwards stories.Absolutely meaningless in the grand scale of things. All to divert from the real issues facing people, and to divert from crapshow UK plc..

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

No idea what they mean by "Purpose" but it may be explained in the dossier.

Presumably by "inclusivity" they feel that Coutts' association with Farage may deter some people banking with them and they've decided that the potential profit from those people outweighs the potential profit from retaining Farage. That's the private banking business for you. It's not about unauthorised opinions as I'm sure banks won't be aware of most customers' opinions. But if you're a public figure who courts controversy and offends sections of the population then you may not be a good fit for a traditional private bank.[/QUOTE]

With all this supposed banking confidentiality, who, that would be deterred from banking with Coutts, would know that Farage banked with them?

---------- Post added at 20:17 ---------- Previous post was at 20:15 ----------

The Coutts stuff is part of "crapshow UK". All this woke shit, diversity pretence, inclusivity hypocrisy that is pandemicing through the UK, is killing us.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Farage of course is a key component of “crapshow UK”. Instead of taking the hint that there’s financial red flags setting off all around the banking sector, and that he’s fell below the criteria for Coutts, he’s taken to social media to conscript the gullible to his cause rather than accept an account with NatWest.

I don’t know how complex Nige’s financial life is, but plenty of people make do in pleb banks without incident.

One wonders how many years that one famous policy will exempt him from the norms and standards everyone else has to adhere to. Johnson’s luck ran out at 6, although there were brazen instances of lying and breaking the law.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/n...obia-zhvgdpscn

https://www.documentcloud.org/docume...farage-dossier

---------- Post added at 20:52 ---------- Previous post was at 20:51 ----------

And all the Culture War crap and faux-outrage that goes alongside it ....

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

And look now we are no longer looking at Boris and his wayward phone.��

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

That apology is a wonderful corporate statement. ‘We’re sorry for using hurty words, anyway, about your Nat West account’. Nothing has changed really.

Important lesson about communication in the work environment though - never put anything in writing you don’t want the public to see

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I thought it was magnificent myself.

As I stated earlier, the risk to their reputation of him “going public” has clearly been identified and managed by a mitigation strategy of a faux apology.

If they really weren’t prepared to do that, they’d have had a quiet chat with him, gave him what he wanted and given him his moment in the sun.

The state broadcaster are certainly out to bat for Farage in their coverage.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Agreed. A words-cost-nothing approach. Dame Alison Rose didn't get to the top by u-turning to people unnecessarily, however big their public image.

I expect many banks are sending emails to staff about their client research reminding them that their clients may request a copy.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

From Anrew Neil’s Tw*tter this morning:

https://twitter.com/afneil/status/16...56-Kgau3lzowJw

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Sounds more like Andrew Neil derangement syndrome.

Hope he has his sun cream for that heatwave in the south of France.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

The irony is that that Coutts, being a private company, does take whatever clients it likes :)

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Actually the banking regulations give a fairly broad range of reasons they can’t use when deciding what clients they like (ironically, they are EU-wide reg’s that were written wholesale into UK law during Brexit). The question continues to be whether in reality they used permissible or non-permissible reasons. Farage’s subject access request revealed a pile of discussion which can be taken to mean they had non-permissible reasons for wanting rid of him and only then went looking for legitimate ones to use as cover. Their ongoing problem is that while they do have legitimate commercial rules about who they do business with, those rules are not rigidly enforced by any stretch of the imagination, especially on those who have been long-term customers and may simply not be as rich as they once were. That makes it all the harder for them to plausibly claim they’re leaning on legitimate reasons.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

A reasonably competent lawyer would manage to turn that on its head. A reason to bin him approached and they gave due consideration to keeping him but on balance decided against.

They reference in their documents higher costs associated with managing Farage as a customer, and if he’s paid off his mortgage presumably he’s not paying them interest for any other reason.

Someone of minimal status/no public standing who falls through the thresholds is unlikely to create an additional burden on their business.

You can actually turn Neil’s statement - because it’s politically driven - on its head. One of the big ironies is the right calling for more regulation simply because of one man, EU red tape protecting him (just as it did for many others across a range of matters and he campaigned vociferously to remove them). One troublesome customer riding roughshot over the rights of a business in the free market, etc etc. Sure, their rules aren’t rigid but if you don’t like them you can go elsewhere. Capitalism, innit?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Yeah, I’m mostly enjoying the ambiguity to be honest. While the principle that people should not be de-banked for their politics is important (and if that does turn out to have occurred, there should be consequences), mostly I’m enjoying watching the place burn. Farage has been caught exaggerating what he’s suffered (obviously he has not been shut out of the entire banking system, even though he suggested he had been); NatWest plc’s Lord Snooty division has been caught with its pants down saying nasty things about someone without any apparent understanding of GDPR and the possibility of their notes going public.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He was refused by 10 banks, which would account for quite a few of the major ones. If politics and opinions aren't to be a factor, then you don't look into them and then use that in a report. The terms used in the report, clearly demonstrate that they were only interested in the biased views of others, eg where else did they pick up the term "grifter" from?

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

I neither know nor care where they got the term from. I simply laugh at their stupidity at writing it down in a file Farage was legally entitled to see at any time.

Whether other banks turned him down or not is a matter of conjecture. Farage has claimed they did. I’m not aware what actual evidence he has tendered to back up that claim. However, his claim he has been shut out of the entire banking system is manifestly false because Coutts’ parent company offered to transfer his business to one of their products.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Don't know where you're getting this idea from. If he banked at Coutts before, chances are that he was looking for another private bank. A quick Google shows there's quite a few of these. https://www.comparebanks.co.uk/banktype/private/

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

If it’s true he’s getting knocked back from pleb banks on that scale it’s likely there’s something more to it. On balance, I do think it’s more likely he’s approaching exclusive institutions.

Coutts wouldn’t be obliged in his subject access request to disclose anything indicative of ongoing or previous criminal investigations (even if they came to nothing).

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Also little point in approaching the high street banks if NatWest has already agreed to take him on.
I suspect that if he didn't strictly qualify for Coutts, he wouldn't qualify for its peers either. But it makes for a good story and keeps Farage in the public eye.

Obviously, the list of what Farage has not disclosed at the moment is long. Beginning with who he's banking with at the moment.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Why is Coutts referred to as "Private" bank?

They are a subsidiary of Natwest Group, which is public.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

but Coutts is a bank for the rich not the normal public

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

It describes the type of business the bank does, not its ownership structure. It’s a euphemism for ‘rich people only’.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

And there is the essence of this - given he is a proven & habitual liar, he would need to provide proof that (high street) banks other than Coutts refused his application to open an account.

Hypothetically speaking, if a high profile racist/bigot with a very public social media footprint approached a "private" bank and asked to open an account, I suspect that in most cases they would be politely turned away. With more and more accounts coming from the younger base, such a customer would pose an active deterrent to these high net worth individuals joining. Sort of obvious really ...

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

He was approaching other banks before the offer from NatWest came through, and that was AFTER he publicly raised the issue.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

And NatWest should be commended for stepping in when the market has clearly decided that they aren’t willing to serve Mr Farage. Especially given the importance of everyday banking services in terms of participating in 21st century society.

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

We’ve been over this point four days ago, and your statement is still not factual.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...8&d=1690212340

Re: The Bank of Farage
 

Nomad old chap is there anything else going on in your life that is more important ?
I suspect there is , like the rest of the entire country, including Nige.