Nigel Farage has a point. Coutts should explain itself

Bank for wealthy says it wants clients who are ‘disrupters and challengers’, but seems to find some less tolerable without the cash

• Full story: Ministers and regulator wade into Farage row
• Explainer: what are the UK rules on access to banking?

Let’s start with where Coutts was within its rights to dump Nigel Farage. The former Ukip leader, according to the memo of the meeting of the “Wealth Reputational Risk Committee”, was about to fall below the qualifying threshold to be a customer.

That threshold is maintaining borrowings or investments of more than £1m, or more than £3m in savings. Farage was soon to pay off his mortgage, presenting Coutts with a choice. It could keep him as a customer and overlook the qualifying criteria. Or it could put him on a “glide path”, in the language of the committee, to being removed. It opted for removal.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/8cb32ps