Big banks in the United Kingdom have shut down nearly a million accounts over the past four years, a paper revealed amid the ongoing scandal of Brexit leader Nigel Farage being debanked for his political opinions.
A report from the Mail on Sunday revealed that banks are on pace to set a record number of closures this year, with 200,000 accounts having already been closed since the start of the year, This puts the banks on pace to top the number seen last year, which stood at 343,350, a Freedom of Information request to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) revealed.
In total, nearly one million accounts have been closed over the past four years, alone. However, the paper noted that this figure may be underestimating the true scale of account closures, given that it only reflects accounts closed over concerns of financial crimes, and therefore would not include cases like that of Nigel Farage, who had his Coutts account shut because the bankers determined that he did “not align” with the bank’s values.
In response to the Farage revelations, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government is preparing legislation to be introduced in the autumn that would mandate that banks give at least a 90-day warning to customers before their accounts are closed and provide a reason for the decision, except for instances when doing so would hinder a police investigation.