Dame Alison Rose, who quit as the NatWest chief executive overnight, had made history when she took up the role in 2019, becoming the first woman to take the top job at one of the UK’s big four banks.
Rose, who has stepped down after a row over the closure of the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s bank account with the private bank Coutts, owned by NatWest, took over from the New Zealander Ross McEwan at the bank, which had stabilised after the financial crisis almost killed it.
But there were still major challenges for the then 49-year-old as she took the reins of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Group.
Dame Alison's apology on Tuesday afternoon comes after the BBC apologised for its inaccurate report earlier this month which said Mr Farage's account was being closed because he no longer met the wealth threshold for Coutts, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Mr Farage, the former leader of the UK Independence Party and Brexiteer, first reported in early July that his account had been closed.
In her first admission that she had been involved, Dame Alison said in conversations with BBC business editor Simon Jack "she had confirmed that Mr Farage was a Coutts customer and he had been offered a NatWest bank account".
She said she had believed this was public knowledge.
The NatWest boss said she had not revealed any personal financial information about Mr Farage.
Mr Farage said NatWest “ought to go back to being a bank, rather than being a moral arbiter for political positions”.
He hit out at the wider NatWest Board in wake of the resignation of Dame Alison Rose. He said: “Anybody on that Board that backed that statement that was put out at 17.42 yesterday, a totally unsustainable and untrue statement, anybody that backed that behaviour, should be gone.”
That month, NatWest posted a £770m loss for the first six months of the year, after it set aside a mammoth £2.1bn to cover loans it thought might go bad, largely as a result of the economic shocks of the pandemic.
In 2021, NatWest announced it would exit Ireland, eventually deciding to sell Ulster Bank to PTSB. Later in the year it was hit with a £264m fine in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a bank under UK anti-money laundering laws.
In the 2022 new year honours list, Dame Alison was recognised for services to financial services.
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