The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has said no bank, building society or payment firm has reported that it closed accounts primarily due to someone’s political views.

The FCA’s report stemmed from a scandal over Natwest-owned private bank Coutts’ shutdown of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s account which saw NatWest chief executive Alison Rose step down from her role after admitting she gave inaccurate information to the BBC about the closure of Nigel Farage’s Coutts account.

The fallout also resulted in the termination of Coutts’ chief executive Peter Flavel.

However, the watchdog conceded that “further work is needed for us to be sure” and said it would undertake further work with firms to verify the data and to “better understand the reasons behind, for example, the closure of accounts due to reputational risk”.

Commenting on the further work is planned to set out to do, FCA chief executive Nikhil Rathi said the time was right for a “debate on how we balance access to bank accounts with the threat of financial crime, as well as firms’ reasonable risk and commercial appetites”.
“An important question for policy makers is whether all individuals, businesses and organisations should have the right to an account, as is the case in some other countries,” Rathi added.

Rose told the broadcaster that prominent Brexiteer Farage was refused an account with Coutts because he “fell below the financial threshold” required to hold an account at Coutts.

Farage subsequently submitted a subject access request to Coutts bank and obtained a report from the bank's reputational risk committee. The document reportedly mentioned commercial considerations, but also said the committee did not think that continuing to have Mr Farage as a client was "compatible with Coutts given his publicly-stated views that were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation".

Following the Farage debacle, the Muslim Council of Britain wrote to prime minister Rishi Sunak to raise concerns over the “arbitrary closure” of bank accounts belonging to Muslim individuals and organisations.

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