Slog ‘systemic’ scam allegation confirmed by RBS customers, NatWest smoke & mirrors fuel fears of impending doom.
Hester….always a warm welcome at the Treasury
Following yesterday’s piece about RBS (a) dumping the loan risk somewhere it can become an asset and then (b) scamming the customers involved for good measure, Sloggers wrote to me in droves about (c) RBS making sure the taxpayer gets lumbered with anything risky – aka, every mortgage everywhere once interest rates start to climb.
Quite a few ‘customers’ of RBS subsidiary NatWest have been receiving the letter below of late. I have the original to view, by the way, should anyone require reassurance as the the provenance here….
‘September 2012
Dear Mr & Mrs __
Changes to the legal ownership of your NatWest Mortgage
As part of our ongoing strategy to simplify our business, I am writing to inform you that we are changing the legal
ownership of your NatWest mortgage from National Westminster Home Loans Ltd to National Westminster Bank Plc by the end of December this year.
Please be assured you do not need to do anything, this letter is just to inform you of the legal ownership change.
The change will have no impact on your current mortgage terms and conditions, which wai (sic) continue to apply, and there is no action for you to take.
While the change is taking place, if you apply for a further advonce (sic) or any other change to your mortgage during this period, you may find that the name of the lender changes on the agreement you receive during the processing of your application, but again you do not need to take any action.
If your account is currently in arrears, the change will not affect any arrangement we may have agreed with you. So please continue to contact us using the same telephone number and address as at present.’
There is nothing to worry about. Do not do anything. We are in control. Soon there will be another glitch, then all will be well.
Unless you’re a relatively normal taxpayer of course, in which case you should be very worried indeed. Because something called ‘Bank’ will be in line for immediate bailout – whereas something called Home Loans might not.
It’s a man’s life in banking, eh? Shift all the assets into the good bit, shift all the toxicity into the taxpayers’ retail bank bit. Then sweat the assets by defrauding the customers. And then – we call this ‘hedging’ in the bankster profession – we swap the shifted assets for cash at the bank, thus showing a healthy cash-flow to evoke widespread confidence.
Talking of fraud, other comment threads and mail confirmed the systemic nature of RBS’s ‘business model’. Examples included:
“I know of, and have spoken to, at least 35 business people, including property developers and SME owners, across the UK whose businesses have been treated in similar ways by RBS, NatWest and RBS Group’s GRG. The pattern would appear to confirm systemic abuse.”
The Times ran a piece on the case yesterday – on page ten, presumably so Boris wouldn’t be upset by it – and on the website, so nobody would see it. As ever with Newscorp, they got a few things wrong: ‘The article mentions that the developers have had one of their claims struck out by the High Court. This is incorrect’ writes my original source, adding ‘the developers have RBS internal documentary proof that the project was in fact solvent. Responding to this, RBS are claiming that it was purely a mistake. In what is a set of complex legal procedures, the developers have had their claims accepted by a judge on no fewer than six occasions.’
The Slog 