Banking Fiasco

Well, by now you have read all about our banking problems with HSBC, but what you don’t know is that many banks in England are not offering charities bank accounts – sounds ridiculous, but true.

Our charity has approached Barclays, Lloyds, Santandar, Sterling, Metro, NatWest, FirstDirect, Chase and more, and also a few foreign banks operating in the UK … but only one, after much pleading agreed to help, Triodos a Dutch bank, all our monies were transferred there, then within a few months they too decided to close our account.  There is nothing wrong in banking terms, never been overdrawn, never requested a loan, is there something wrong with doing business with India ? With all banks, the charity went through each of their opening an account process and a few days after this the decline arrive, nearly all without exception, the last sentence saying, “ … you'll need to make alternative banking arrangements for your business. There isn't an opportunity to appeal this decision. “.

Your charity, Child Aid, has been operating quite successfully for over twenty years, you our supporters have been excellent supporters. So, our Trustees personally have now been funding our charity, no UK international bank wants to offer us an account, maybe if they read this, a bank might have some compassion, otherwise we shall continue to fund our charity. 

Fortunately, but also unfortunately, the recent pandemic has reduced our Indian activities, so funding has been less than in the charity’s early days, however, this year, following the pandemic slow down, it would be nice to restart our activities .. so we can only hope. 

Evidently a well known politician, Nigel Farage, is going through the same disgusting situation, he too cannot get a UK bank for himself.  Something is totally wrong … with HSBC I even approached the Banking Ombudsman, requesting support from the lost donations, who took over eighteen months to reply and said that `it was up to the banks who they take as customers`, so like Nigel, for the moment, Child Aid is also a non banking entity, but we’ll keep all of you advised since many of our supporters have undertaken massive support in the early fifteen/sixteen years and we are determined not to let them down now.