When was it, do you think, that banks stopped being institutions that kept your money and started being guardians of public morality? Time was, I would get hauled into the Berkeley Square branch of the Allied Irish Bank (GB) to explain my overdraft situation; now bank managers have disappeared along with actual branches (my nearest one is in Belfast).
Instead, we get virtue signalling and, sinisterly, banks withdrawing accounts from people they don’t like. That includes, to date, “politically exposed persons”, or PEPs (who are subject to more rigorous financial checks), the Reform party and — says the MoD — many military contractors. Arms manufacturers fall foul of the code of investors who bill themselves as ethical — that doesn’t just cover the creeps who make cluster bombs, but manufacturers of the anti-tank missiles we want to provide Ukraine with. Individuals whose accounts are withdrawn aren’t just fund managers for Islamic State or money launderers, but are usually PEPs, and in many cases on an unaccountable list kept by World-Check, a company owned by the London Stock Exchange.
It’s not banks’ business to police views on Brexit or other issues
The good news is that there’s to be an amendment to the Digital Markets Bill to prevent banks discriminating unreasonably against customers and requiring them to give them reasons within 30 days. And the Chancellor has asked the City minister, Andrew Griffith, to investigate banks apparently closing accounts simply because they disagree with customers’ opinions.
About time. It’s not banks’ business to police views on Brexit or other issues, and customers are entitled to say just what they think of their behaviour. Banks are there to enable us to put our money somewhere and to draw it out when we need it and occasionally to lend us more of it (look up Ogden Nash’s poem on banks to see how that works). If they want to go in for morality, how about banking better? Passing on Bank of England rate rises to savers perhaps.Keeping branches open would help too. And how about ATMs in rural areas?
There are 1.3 million people without bank accounts but none of them should be in that position because their bank disapproves of them. Unless of course, the account holder is a money launderer. Just being difficult isn’t enough.
