Can banks keep secrets?

"Our Privacy and Client Confidentiality Policy includes both data protection and client confidentiality...all colleagues and contractors are required to undertake annual mandatory privacy and client confidentiality training." So says the website of the NatWest Group, of which Coutts bank is a subsidiary. Presumably Alison Rose was on holiday the day her "mandatory" client confidentiality training took place. Rose has left her job as CEO of NatWest after she admitted briefing a BBC journalist about the closure of the Coutts account of Nigel Farage, a controversial character who is seen as the driving force behind the British referendum vote to leave the European Union (EU).

Her briefing to the journalist was inaccurate she admitted - but surely that isn't the point? The fact that she spoke to anyone about a personal bank account, even to give accurate information about a personal account, is a breach of the UK GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), often referred to as the world's strongest set of data protection rules. Fines for breaching UK GDPR regulations can be imposed, up to a maximum of £17.5 million. Farage doesn't strike one as someone who is likely to forgive and forget.

Presumably Alison Rose was on holiday the day her "mandatory" client confidentiality training took place.

More generally, this small farrago reveals how even a top boss at one of the UK's biggest banks, of which 38.6% is still state-owned, can show an egregious disregard for one of the cornerstones of the relationship with a client. The relationship between a bank and its clients has historically been based on trust, if necessary underscored by a contract. Sir Howard Davies, who has been chairman of NatWest since 2015, said that the board still had "full confidence" in Rose and that her departure was a "sad moment". Which seems like rubbing salt in the wound.

It's been 15 years since banks showed themselves to be playing fast and loose with money they didn't have and people's lives. The 2008 Great Financial Disaster was essentially a banking crisis, during which the UK taxpayer spent about £46 billion on bailing out NatWest Bank. In the years since then there has been acres of print devoted to how banks have changed/are changing their culture'. Yet the Rose fiasco shows how little has really changed.