Warning as TSB hails a boom time for banks

In leaked memo, boss tells staff of more ‘sympathetic’ era for the financial sector

TSB chief executive Debbie Crosbie has told her staff she expects Boris Johnson’s administration to usher in a new, ‘more sympathetic’ era for business and banks, according to an internal report leaked to The Mail on Sunday.

The bank chief said the Prime Minister’s clear General Election victory was a ‘good outcome’ for the financial services sector and would have a ‘settling effect’ on the British economy.

Crosbie, who sits on a top committee of the powerful CBI lobby group, circulated the comments internally. The glowing appraisal of the prospects for financial institutions will be regarded as among the first candid assessments of the new Government as businesses and City institutions pore over its initial signals to second-guess its plans.

Last week, Chancellor Sajid Javid – a former banker at Deutsche Bank – promised a £100billion ‘infrastructure revolution in our great country’. He said: ‘In the Budget [on March 11] we will be setting out how we are going to take advantage of all the huge opportunities that Brexit will bring.’

Crosbie’s comments will be warmly received by the banking industry and by investors keen to see financial institutions given a lift. There have been hopes that the Government would axe City regulation and signal the end of banker-bashing. But the sentiment is unlikely to be shared by those who have been on the sharp end of bank malpractice or by campaigners who may interpret such a sea change as banks being let off the hook.

Conservative MP Kevin Hollinrake said: ‘If regulations are unwarranted they should be reviewed. But I think most of us, after what we’ve been through over the last ten years, will have great concerns about a lightertouch regulatory system.

‘I think we’re still a long way – especially in terms of a business banking relationship – from having a level playing field between customers and the banks.’

Crosbie said: ‘I think that for people in financial services institutions, we should think that it’s probably a good [General Election] outcome.’ She said the ‘agenda set out’ by the new Government ‘does suggest that they’re going to think much more sympathetically about a more considered view of regulation, particularly for mid-tier banks’.

The ‘Big Six’ banks, with about £1.8 trillion of assets, are Lloyds, Barclays, RBS, HSBC, Nationwide and Santander. The mid-tier banks comprise 14 lenders, including The Co-operative Bank, Metro Bank, Tesco, TSB, Virgin Money and Yorkshire Building Society. Crosbie said: ‘I’m going to be very actively trying to make sure that everything we can do to influence the agenda, to make it easier for us to provide good services to our customers, we put at the forefront.’

Despite once reportedly being caught uttering the words ‘f*** business’, many assume Johnson will reverse the slide into anti-business sentiment initially embraced by his predecessor, Theresa May. During the Tory leadership campaign, Johnson said he ‘actually stuck up for the bankers’ after the financial crisis. He said: ‘I defended them day in, day out, from those who wanted to hang them from the nearest lamppost.’

Crosbie was hired to lead TSB’s turnaround following its IT meltdown in 2018. The bank is targeting struggling families as it shifts its focus away from wealthier customers. Sources said it may lose some of those customers – many of whom TSB inherited from the former Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society – due to branch closures.

Separately last night, TSB denied speculation it was considering a fresh wave of job cuts to help save £100million. Sources said staff feared hundreds of central office job cuts could be announced as soon as April. They said the wave of cost-cutting may also impact TSB sites in Keypoint, Bristol, and Barnwood, Gloucestershire. But TSB said: ‘We have no plans to close those sites.’