The Green Ink Brigade

In September 2022, Nigel Smith, landlord of The Fleece Inn in Bretforton, Worcestershire, held a ‘Nigel Night’ in an attempt to revive the fortunes of his name, which is in danger of dying out. Data from the Office of National Statistics revealed that no babies were given the name Nigel in 2016 or 2020, and Nigel Smith’s gathering attracted 372 other Nigels, some of whom had travelled from as far as the USA, Zimbabwe and Nicaragua.

Had Nigel Smith chosen to refuse to serve any of the Nigels, or deny them entry to his pub, he would have been perfectly within his rights to do so. A licensee has the right to refuse entry to whomever they wish, so long as the reason is not unlawful, for instance refusal cannot be on the grounds of sex, race, disability, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or belief.

In much the same way, banks have always had the right to close a customer’s account, although like our publican, they should not do so for reasons that would constitute unlawful discrimination. Infringing the terms and conditions of the account is legitimate reason - failing to maintain a minimum balance, or deposit an agreed minimum amount per month, for example - or because of suspected fraudulent activity or money laundering. In those latter instances the bank would not be able to cite those as reasons for the account closure to the customer on the grounds of ‘tipping off.’

The issue of banks closing customers’ accounts has become hot news following Coutts & Co’s decision to close the accounts of former MEP and UKIP leader, Nigel Farage. The reasons for the bank closing Farage’s accounts, and the rights and wrongs of that, have been done to death elsewhere; it strikes me as probable that Coutts were looking for a reason to end the relationship, and found one when he paid off his mortgage, regardless of what happened subsequently.

What is interesting, is what has happened after Nigel Farage went public with the news of Coutts & Co’s withdrawal of his banking facilities.

Firstly, there’s the idea that as soon as anyone errs, or does something that the popular press and Twitterati don’t like, then they should be sacked. In the last year or so there have been calls for teachers, junior doctors, nurses, railway workers, and workers in a score of other professions to be sacked for exercising their right to withdraw their labour in pursuit of pay claims, or – in the case of civil servants – simply being perceived to not be working hard enough. In the Farage farrago, there have been calls for not only Nat West CEO Dame Alison Rose to resign – which she has done (correctly, what with the customer confidentiality she breached by discussing Farage’s relationship with Coutts with a BBC journalist being sacrosanct) - but for the whole board to go. This whole ‘sack the lot of them’ culture has gone way too far.

Secondly, there’s the idea that the Nat West board should be sacked is justifiable because about 40% of the Nat West Group (of which Coutts & Co are part), is owned by the taxpayer. Weirdly, there’s also glee on the part of the same group of people that the Farage affair has wiped £600 million off Nat West's share price: It’s a strange shareholder that relishes the price of their holdings plummeting. That share price tumbling was good news for hedge fund Marshall Wace though, as they made a significant sum shorting Nat West shares. By random coincidence, Marshall Wace’s co-founder Sir Paul Marshall jointly owns GB News, the TV station that employs Nigel Farage. Small world, isn’t it?

While Dame Alison Rose was indiscreet in talking to the BBC about Farage, he published the full details of the document that Coutts & Co provided him with after he made a subject access request. What has been interesting has been some of the comments in the media - mainstream and social - about the document, which exposes a trend that has been increasingly noticeable - especially on Twitter - in recent years, and that is of the uninformed expert. 

Whether it is Brexit, covid, climate change, immigration (especially so-called illegal immigration), and now banking, it is astonishing how many people are vociferous in denying the views of people whose day jobs are working in those fields and are instead enthusiastic in promoting alternative views that have little or no facts to back them up. Emboldened by having a platform that allows gibberish to be disseminated to a wide audience, these people have become ‘expert’ in the last few years in trade deals, geopolitics, epidemiology, climate science, and now banking, all on the basis of ‘research’ that consists largely of bouncing around echo chambers watching weird YouTube videos and reading niche websites. When they start spouting nonsense about a subject you know something about, it casts much doubt on their pronouncements on other topics.

The Coutts document that Nigel Farage gave to the Daily Mail, which appeared in print and on their website, accepts that Farage has been 'professional' in his relations with the bank. Having learned during my thirty odd years working in banking however that it is unwise to put anything in a note on a customer’s file that you would not want read out in a court of law, one wonders if this was perhaps erring on the side of discretion over accuracy. Of course, I know nothing of Mr Farage’s conduct when dealing with his bank, but his public persona suggests that he might have been a customer with quite exacting standards.

Everyone should be entitled to expect their bank to behave professionally when dealing with them, but in my experience, some customers have unrealistic expectations. During my time in banking, particularly in branch banking, there were certain customers whose name being mentioned would provoke groans from members of staff who habitually had to deal with them. 

These customers would be the sort to march in without an appointment and demand immediate access to their safe custody items, then loudly complain if made to wait more than a few minutes. There were customers who would unreasonably demand huge amounts of information within unrealistic time frames – “I need a complete breakdown of all the interest earned on my deposit account between 1974 and 1992, and I need it in fifteen minutes” – and would not take no for an answer. And that’s before you start to consider the customers who would make requests for things to be done that were either impossible, contrary to the bank’s regulations, or even illegal. Some customers would think it perfectly acceptable to arrive five minutes before closing time and tie staff up with protracted but not urgent transactions.

Finally, there were The Green Ink Brigade. These customers would write long rambling letters in green biro on numbered pages torn from duplicate books, the sort used with carbon paper. Letters that would continue, spider like, up one margin and down the other once the bottom of the page was reached, and which were almost indecipherable to read and incomprehensible of purpose.

There are many legitimate reasons why banks can close a customer’s account; writing letters to them in green ink should be one of them. I wonder if Mr Farage owns a green biro?