A Very British Banking Scandal

The shocking stories of how our high street banks broke hundreds of family businesses.

Imagine. You are running a growing business. You go to your high street bank for a loan. The bank agrees, only too willing to offer you a very attractive interest rate.

Then, suddenly, the promised low-interest rate rockets, alongside added fees and hidden charges. You are no longer a valued customer for the bank, instead they now have an agenda to seize your assets to help the bank plug its own financial hole. You’re told your business is failing.

The next step is to sell off your assets including your home. You face ruin. Your family life is shattered. You may even contemplate suicide.

You feel stitched-up but when you try to fight back, you find the police, the regulators and the courts are of no help. The bank insists it’s all legal and it has bottomless funds for an army of expensive lawyers. Inquiries set up by the Government in response to your claims of unfairness and fraud begin to look like a cover-up.

A Very British Banking Scandal reveals the human stories of some of the thousands who suffered a fate like this after the banks were bailed out in 2008. Former BBC Correspondents, Steve Brodie and Emily Buchanan, have spent years following the fate of business owners whose lives have been destroyed.

They have heard from whistle-blowers, bank managers and insiders who reveal the scale of these practices and the incentives to drive them through.

It is the story of how, through a culture of nods, winks and establishment networks, those too small to resist were sacrificed to save those too big to fail.