Ernst & Young, NatWest, Nationwide — and the Audit Firm That Has to Decide Who It Is
12 February 2026
Ernst & Young LLP is now formally on notice.
PropertyCorruption.com has written directly to EY UK leadership and global public relations to notify them of a material governance failure and unquantified risk at NatWest Group plc, arising squarely in the “Subsequent Events” period following the 2025 year-end.
This is not background noise. This is not commentary after the fact.
This is live audit territory.
The immediate trigger EY cannot ignore
The sudden departure of NatWest’s Group Chief Risk Officer, Keiran Foad, in January 2026, occurred:
- after year-end,
- during audit finalisation,
- and immediately following a six-month external review linked to a serious, unresolved portfolio-risk case study.
No public explanation followed.
No remediation plan was published.
No confirmation was given that the underlying risk had been neutralised.
If a bank’s response to extreme risk is to remove the executive responsible for overseeing it, that is risk displacement — not risk resolution.
EY has now been asked, directly and on record:
Would you reconsider your audit sign-off if you believed serious undisclosed risk existed?
That question alone makes this an audit moment, not a PR one.
“Do nothing” is a decision — not neutrality
For an audit firm, there are only a handful of real options once notified:
- Engage properly — request further information, challenge management assertions, reassess disclosure risk.
- Contain — treat the notification as inconvenient but non-actionable.
- Ignore — proceed as if nothing was received.
Options 2 and 3 are how cover-ups form, even when everyone involved insists they “followed process.”
And process is exactly what collapses when regulators are weak and accountability is diffused.
Nationwide is already in this — not “later”
This is not just about NatWest.
Nationwide Building Society is already wrapped up in the same growing scandal (also audited by E&Y), not as a future hypothetical, but as an active participant in the pattern of institutional behaviour under examination.
Nationwide staff are reporting mental health issues due to the stress of the cover-up.
That is not normal operational pressure.
That is what institutional concealment does internally before it ever breaks externally.
EY is fully aware it audits across this ecosystem. The idea that these issues can be “siloed” bank-by-bank is no longer credible.
The image accompanying the top of this article originates from the World Economic Forum.
That matters, because WEF is where corporate leaders publicly perform their values.
EY’s Global Chair and CEO, Janet Truncale, has taken the Davos stage speaking about:
- confidence,
- leadership,
- resilience,
- trust in systems.
WEF language is full of words like dialogue, responsibility, long-term trust.
So here is the unavoidable question:
Is that language real — or is it just stagecraft?
Because when a serious, specific warning lands on your desk in the middle of audit sign-off season, dialogue means asking questions — not pretending you never saw the email.
EY’s choice is now visible
PropertyCorruption.com has made this explicit:
- The email is stored.
- The notification is timestamped.
- The lack of response, if that’s the route chosen, will also be recorded.
No one is asking EY to make accusations.
No one is asking EY to publish conclusions prematurely.
They are being asked to do something far more basic — and far more revealing:
Acknowledge the risk exists.
Acknowledge the question has been asked.
State whether it affects audit judgement.
If EY chooses silence, that silence will speak clearly enough.
Weak regulators and systemic corruption might protect that choice for a while.
But not forever.
We wonder what the head of the WEF, Børge Brende, makes of all this. Is it aligned with his stated values? Is transparency truly part of the Davos Agenda? Please take this article as an interview request to Mr Brende.
