undefined | Better HN

0 pointsavianlyric8mo ago0 comments

> A while back a British politician was “de-banked” and his bank denied it. That’s extremely wrong.

Cry me a river. I’ve worked in banks in the team making exactly these kinds of decisions. Trust me Nigel Farage knew exactly what happened and why. NatWest never denied it to the public, because they originally refused to comment on it. Commenting on the specifics details of a customer would be a horrific breach of customer privacy, and a total failure in their duty to their customers. There’s a damn good reason the NatWests CEO was fired after discussing the details of Nigel’s account with members of the public.

When you see these decisions from the inside, and you see what happens when you attempt real transparency around these types of decisions. You’ll also quickly understand why companies are so cagey about explaining their decision making. Simple fact is that support staff receive substantially less abuse, and have fewer traumatic experiences when you don’t spell out your reasoning. It sucks, but that’s the reality of the situation. I used to hold very similar views to yourself, indeed my entire team did for a while. But the general public quickly taught us a very hard lesson about cost of being transparent with the public with these types of decisions.

0 comments

pyuser5838mo ago

> NatWest never denied it to the public, because they originally refused to comment on it.

Are you saying that Alison Rose did not leak to the BBC? Why was she forced to resign? I thought it was because she leaked false information to the press.

This isn’t a diversion. It’s exactly the problem with not being transparent. Of course Farage knew what happened, but how could he convince the public (he’s a public figure), when the bank is lying to the press?

The bank started with a lie (claiming he was exited because the account was too low), and kept lying!

These were active lies, not simply a refusal to explain their reasons.

avianlyricOP8mo ago

> Why was she forced to resign? I thought it was because she leaked false information to the press.

She was forced to resign because she leaked, the content of the leak was utterly immaterial. The simple fact she leaked was an automatically fireable offence, it doesn’t matter a jot if she lied or not. Customer privacy is non-negotiable when you’re bank. Banks aren’t number 10, the basic expectation is that customer information is never handed out, except to the customer, in response to a court order, or the belief that there is an immediate threat to life.

Do you honestly think that it’s okay for banks to discuss the private banking details of their customers with the press?

adrian_b8mo ago

She was fired because she leaked information and this fact had become public.

When they can cover such facts, the banks are much less prone to use appropriate punishments.

Many years ago, some employee of a bank has confused my personal bank account with a company account of my employer, and she has sent a list with everything that I have bought using my personal account, during 4 months, to my employer, where the list could have been read by a few dozen people.

Despite the fact this was not only a matter of internal discipline, but violating the banking secrecy was punishable by law where I lived, the bank has tried for a long time to avoid admitting that anything wrong has happened.

However, I have pursued the matter, so they have been forced to admit the wrong doing. Despite this being something far more severe than what has happened to Farage, I did not want for the bank employee to be fired. I considered that an appropriate punishment would have been a pay cut for a few months, which would have ensured that in the future she would have better checked the account numbers for which she sends information to external entities.

In the end all I have got was a written letter where the bank greatly apologized for their mistake. I am not sure if the guilty employee has ever been punished in any way.

After that, I have moved my operations to another bank. Had they reacted rightly to what had happened, I would have stayed with them.

2 more replies

Dylan168078mo ago

> Do you honestly think that it’s okay for banks to discuss the private banking details of their customers with the press?

The high level nature of the matter was quite public at that point.

zelphirkalt8mo ago

The point is not merely for that affected person to know, whoever they are, the point of transparency is for the public to know and form their opinion about it, and not be blindly controlled by unelected businesses.

like_any_other8mo ago

> You’ll also quickly understand why companies are so cagey about explaining their decision making.

Because they want to perform political censorship without us knowing about it? You'll forgive me if I'm not too sympathetic to that.

I happen to be familiar with that case, and that is exactly what happened. The Coutts report explicitly found that he met the economic criteria for retention [0], but was dropped due to political reasons, among others his friendship with Novak Djokovic, and re-tweeting an allegedly transphobic joke by Ricky Gervais ("old fashioned women. You know, the ones with wombs.") [1].

To top it off, the BBC did their best to aid in this deception, reporting: Farage says he was effectively "de-banked" for his political views and that he is "far from alone" [2]

Contrary to the BBC's portrayal, this was not an unsupported opinion coming from Farage - he directly quoted what the bank itself wrote in their internal discussions on this matter, that he obtained through a subject access request.

Further, in their apology for getting the story wrong, the BBC wrote: "On 4 July, the BBC reported Mr Farage no longer met the financial requirements for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter. The former UKIP leader later obtained a Coutts report which indicated his political views were also considered." [3]

This is misleading past the point of deceit. The BBC tried to give the impression that financial requirements were the primary reason for the account closure, and his politics were just an at-best secondary "also". But the Coutts report explicitly said that he “meets the EC [economic contribution] criteria for commercial retention”, so his politics were the primary and only reason.

Most of this information is absent in the BBC's reporting, which uses only vague, anodyne phrases like "political views" and "politically exposed person", avoids specifics, but does find time to cite Labour MP accusations that it is hypocritical how quickly the government reacted to banks trying to financially deplatform the enemy political faction, when the government hasn't yet rid itself of corruption.

So yes, you sure present a difficult "dilemma": Do we want powerful commercial and media interests to team up and lie to us, or do we want at least some degree of transparency and honesty in their dealings? Really there are no easy answers, and the choice would keep anyone up at night...

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/18/nigel-farage-cou...

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/18/nigel-farage-cou... (Ignore Farage's hyperbole that collecting information posted to public Twitter accounts is "Stasi-style")

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-66296935

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse