I've been a customer of Nat West for 36 years. I thought I'd see what their quote was for home insurance. Lo and behold, they had that question. You know the one, whether you had EVER been convicted of a crime.

Of course I ended the quotation at that point. However, a couple of weeks later I received a survey asking why I'd not gone ahead with purchase. I wrote a whole angry screed about how they were acting illegally and against the ROA. Luckily, I thought better of it before pressing send. That would almost certainly flag me up as somebody who may have something worth background checking.

Then there is the curious case of my Metro Bank account. Last September I received a letter out of the blue that they had reviewed my account and no longer wanted me as a customer. No reason given. I rang customer services and they said I could only get that information by writing to headquarters and requesting it. It was incredibly puzzling as my account had never been in deficit and at the time had about £100 in it. I've got an excellent credit rating. I really can't think why they would want to close the account unilaterally. That said, I was just about to get a pension lump sum payout of £20,000 which allowed me to laugh at their stupidity, but it did make me think that financial services don't really care about the law because complainants would effectively be raising a red flag in the air and shouting look at me so they can get away with it.

There's nothing like a previous conviction to turn you paranoid!

Hi, yes its easy to see hidden motives when a previous conviction exists but its not always the case.This copied from this years statement could possibly explain Metro`s behaviour and possibly a desire to "shed" low profitability accounts. Most of a banks profit s come from either interest charges on loans or from interest gained from accounts with big balances in them so if you dont fall into either category you arnt attractive to the bank really.

Metro Bank (United Kingdom)

"After a period of rapid growth, Metro Bank hit difficulties in early 2019 when it announced it had insufficient capital to meet regulatory requirements. This followed the discovery of an error in the way it categorised its commercial loans for capital adequacy purposes. As a result it had to raise an additional £350m of capital. Concerns over the announcement and the bank’s ability to raise the capital resulted in the bank’s share price falling by 75% in less than four months and large depositors withdrawing cash because of “adverse sentiment”.

75% drop thats a " core" breach of Chernobyl proportions and getting out is probably the best thing anyway.

    My bank just lately haven't been dazzling in their approach either but I think it isn't personal just belt tightening. I recently applied to move my mortgage to another high street bank and it wasn't a problem. The "question" wasn't asked and I was accepted no problem. I have been asked when applying for car insurance and house insurance but never rejected as a result of disclosure.

I know Metro got themselves into difficulty, but the public announcement was three months after they closed my account and to all intents and purposes it was being operated normally (the £100 I mentioned was just a snapshot balance at the time they said they were going to close). They were in clear breach of contract and their terms and conditions but it wasn't worth referring them to the FCA as, in the words of Alan Partridge, of course I had the last laugh!

As has been discussed here before, with car insurance it generally doesn't make a difference as long as they aren't driving convictions. However, whilst I agree that you can get a policy a declaration will, in my experience, bump contents insurance premiums up 4 times higher for exactly the same risk to the insurance companies.

My point being that they should not be able to ask about spent convictions. I'm fast coming to the conclusion that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is an absolutely worthless piece of legislation.

I would agree, there is little or no rehabilitation in truth.

I agree. Once a conviction is spent, it should be considered as such

Here's the offending question

You and any adult living with you have:

• Never had any insurance policy cancelled or declared void.
• Never had any special terms imposed for home insurance.
• Never been convicted of any criminal offence (other than motoring convictions) or have any prosecutions pending.
• Not suffered more than two incidents of loss, damage or liability, whether insured or not during the last three years.