Maybe Next Time NatWest Will Appoint a More Literate CEO

Outgoing NatWest CEO Dame Alison Rose revealed her untrustworthiness as a banker of any seniority in being willing to discuss Nigel Farage’s bank accounts with Coutts with a journalist. Why was she even sitting next to the BBC’s Simon Jack at a charity dinner, given the topicality of the account cancellations and the risk of how it might appear? She could hardly have expected not to be asked about the matter.

When she belatedly admitted she was the source for Jack’s story, published by the BBC, stating she believed the closures were purely on the grounds of his having insufficient funds in both accounts, she also wrote that she was unaware of the Coutts Wealth Reputational Risk Committee report into him. That would suggest she was either ignorant of that committee’s existence or had managed to overlook it, which was remarkable given that she had spent so much of her time as CEO burnishing the Group’s reputation – at least as she perceived it – by ‘tackling the climate emergency’ and pushing other fashionable causes, through such actions as ending new loans for oil and gas extraction and plastering bank branches with ‘Pride’ posters.

Since taking the helm at NatWest, which owns Coutts, as the first female boss of a major British lender, she had made a show of putting ‘diversity’ at the heart of the business.

A common criticism of ‘diversity’ drives is that they inevitably come at the expense of calibre in personnel and quality in output, and Dame Alison is perhaps now the unwitting poster child for such complaints. Indeed, her initial letter of ‘apology’ to Farage suggests she is herself somewhat challenged in the literacy department.

Consider the following instances of incorrect or superfluous language and unhelpfully vague wording, noted in-line below.

I am writing to apologise for the deeply inappropriate comments about yourself you made in the now published papers prepared for the Wealth Committee. I would like to make it clear that they do not reflect the view of the bank. [Which bank – NatWest or Coutts?]

I believe very strongly that freedom of expression and access to banking are fundamental to our society and it is absolutely not our policy to exit a customer on the basis of legally held political and personal views.

To this end, I would also like to personally reiterate our offer to you of alternative banking arrangements at NatWest. [Unclear if this includes Coutts, but presumably not, making the apology somewhat empty]

I fully understand yours your and the public’s concern that the processes for bank account closure are not sufficiently transparent. Customers have a right to expect their bank to make consistent decisions against publicly available criteria and those decisions should be communicated clearly and openly with them, within the constraints imposed by the law.

To achieve this, sector–wide change is required, but your experience, highlighted in recent days, has shown we need to also put our own processes under scrutiny too. As a result I am commissioning a full review of the Coutts processes for how these decisions are made and communicated, to ensure we provide a better, clearer and more consistent experience for customers in future.

The review will be reporting to me as NatWest Group CEO.

I welcome the FCA’s reviews of regulatory rules associated with Politically Exposed Persons, and we will implement the recommendations of our review alongside any changes that they or the Government makes make to the overall regulatory framework.

Yours sincerely,

Alison Rose

“They’d genuinely rather have a less qualified ethnic minority who can’t even compose an email to the clients because it helps with their ESG Rating,” an unnamed banker told the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson.

Many Daily Sceptic readers will be unsurprised by these failings, having been confronted with “Please practice social distancing” signs on walls and floors in NatWest and RBS branches for the entire duration of the pandemic. ‘Practice’ here is a verb, of course, and should be spelled ‘practise’.

In response to criticism on this point when raised a while ago, ‘John’ from NatWest tweeted: “We’ve been advised the use of practice can also work as a variable noun in this instance, as we are asking our customers to do something in our branch i.e., practice social distancing.”

That response is nonsense: “Please practise” is unambiguously a request to perform an action, to practise social distancing.

Maybe the Farage debacle will see a new CEO appointed with higher literacy standards, but I doubt any such requirement will be in the job description.

Colin Tabb is a pseudonym.