The UK Treasury warned Britain’s banks to heed the lessons of the departure of NatWest Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Alison Rose, telling executives to respect their customers’ freedom of expression.
(Bloomberg) — The UK Treasury warned Britain’s banks to heed the lessons of the departure of NatWest Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Alison Rose, telling executives to respect their customers’ freedom of expression.
“We all need to learn lessons from that across the whole financial sector,” City Minister Andrew Griffith said in an interview with the Bloomberg UK Politics Podcast, referring to the departure of Rose. “It’s fundamental that people have the right to a bank account, a basic building block of modern life, without worrying about being de-banked due to something they’ve said.”
Griffith had already planned to meet with bank bosses to discuss account closures on Wednesday, before Rose’s abrupt departure in the early hours. That was prompted by her handling of the closure of politician-turned-broadcaster Nigel Farage’s bank accounts in part because of his anti-immigration opinions. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government has seized on the issue and said it will crack down on banks denying financial services without proper explanation.
Attendees at the gathering — including the heads of Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Santander UK — agreed to bring their policies in line with planned government reforms around the closure of customer accounts “as soon as possible, even anticipating the new regulations where possible,” according to a Treasury readout.
“This would never have happened if NatWest had not taken it upon itself to withdraw a bank account due to someone’s lawful political views,” Griffith said in the Trreasury statement. “That was and is always unacceptable.”
Griffith said he expected banks to spell out why they are terminating accounts in future and reforms in train will increase termination notice periods to 90 days.
Attendees “acknowledged that recent events had impacted upon public trust for the whole sector and expressed their clear commitment to government policy on account closure and to act quickly to restore confidence,” the Treasury said.
Griffith declined in his Bloomberg interview to comment on whether he’d had a personal conversation with the NatWest board about Rose’s position ahead of her resignation. However, he said there’s a regular dialog between senior Treasury officials and the major banks.
The Treasury listed the bankers in attendance at Wednesday’s meeting as:
- Barclays UK CEO Matt Hammerstein
- HSBC UK CEO Ian Stuart
- Philip Robinson, a Managing Director at Lloyds Banking Group
- Nationwide Building Society CEO Debbie Crosbie
- NatWest’s CEO of retail banking, David Lindberg
- Santander UK CEO Mike Regnier
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