Recommendation 14

We asked the Bank whether it considered the Department’s questions about Greensill’s accreditation as the Department encouraging the approval of Greensill’s application. The Bank told us that it had considered the level of interest from the Department as “unusual”, but that it considered it “understandable that the Department in charge of looking after business would ask how various things were progressing”.37 It explained that it wanted to make sure that its processes had not been “interfered with” and while this was “unlikely”, it was something the Bank wanted to test.38 On 30 April 2021, the Bank launched an internal review to test if there had been any external influence that had impacted its decision to accredit Greensill, and whether its independence had been undermined. The Bank told us that the review had found no attempts to undermine the Bank’s independence and while the level of interest from the Department was “unusual”, it “was very confident that it did not have an impact” on its decision to accredit Greensill.39 The purpose of the review was to find out whether anyone attempted to exert influence over the Bank, not just whether any attempts were successful or not. The Bank told us the review concluded that there were not attempts to undermine its independence.40 Other parts of government Greensill applied to for support