Bank To Face Investigation Over Customer Suicide

One of the UK’s largest high-street banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland, faces an investigation after it emerged that a suicide victim had run up £130,000 of debt with 22 different credit cards.

Richard Cullen, 65, a mechanic from Wiltshire, had accrued a staggering amount of personal debt through credit cards. His financial problems were compounded with the interest that the debt was accruing.

Of the 22 credit cards Mr Cullen owned, four were issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland. These cards accounted for £35,000 of Mr Cullen’s credit card debt.

This debt was responsible for £4,300 in interest and charges, accounting for a third of his annual income of £15,000.

In the meantime Mr Cullen, who was later found dead in his garage, had his credit proble3ms added to when the credit limit on another card issued by the same group was extended from £1,000 to £7,700.

Seymour Fortescue, chief executive of the Banking Code Standards Board (BCSB), said: "I will investigate to see if there has been a breach of the banking code."

Mr Cullen's widow, Wendy, said: "Richard had a responsibility, he took out the credit cards and loans, but surely the bank must take responsibility as well for allowing him to go on and on getting deeper and deeper into debt."

In a statement, RBS told the BBC it was not aware Mr Cullen had a serious debt problem and said it did not make any errors in the handling of his account.

The bank said he was a customer of 14 years and did not make them aware of the huge debt he had accumulated with a total of 16 providers.

The tragic story of Mr Cullen will help fuel the debate on where a credit cardholders’ responsibility for his/hers’ debt ends and the card issuers’ responsibility begins.

The UK credit card market, along with the other personal credit markets, is under increasingly intense scrutiny from the government and consumer groups as Britain is still in the clutches of record levels of personal debt.

Alisdair Milton
4th July 2006

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