Arron Banks

Arron Fraser Andrew Banks (born 1966) is a British businessman and political donor.

He is the co-founder (with Richard Tice) of the Leave.EU campaign.

Banks was previously one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and helped Nigel Farage's campaign for Britain to leave the EU.

Over seven years, along with Australian business partner John Gannon, Banks expanded the van insurance business to become Group Direct Limited, and in 2008 the company floated by means of a reverse takeover as Brightside Group.

He was previously CEO of AIM-listed Manx Financial Group from April 2008 to February 2009.

He was its CEO from June 2011 to June 2012, at which time the company was listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

After Banks was dismissed from the company in 2012, he sold £6m worth of the shares in 2013, and received significantly more when the investment firm AnaCap Financial Partners bought Brightside the following year.

As part of an agreement with the regulators Banks resigned his directorships at Eldon in 2013 and Southern Rock in 2014, also accepting a "period of ban or self-exclusion from other insurance directorships".

He also bought Old Down Manor from musician Mike Oldfield, converting it into a wedding venue.

Banks was the chief executive (CEO) of Southern Rock Insurance Company in 2014, which underwrites insurance policies for the website GoSkippy.com, founded by Banks.

After Banks' departure, Brightside took legal action against him, alleging he used confidential information in setting up GoSkippy.com six months later.

There were also legal actions between Southern Rock and Brightside.

The Guardian reported in 2014 that Companies House records appeared to show that Banks had set up 37 different companies using slight variations of his name.

The names used by Banks were Aron Fraser Andrew Banks, Arron Andrew Fraser Banks, Arron Fraser Andrew Banks and Arron Banks.

The profiles for the first three names all used the same date of birth but registered different lists of companies.

When asked by The Guardian about this in 2014, he declined to answer questions on the topic.

Banks also owns Eldon Insurance, whose CEO Elizabeth Bilney was also in charge at Leave.EU.

The offshore holding company that controls Eldon Insurance is ICS Risk Solutions, which funds many of Banks' activities and has paid over £77m between 2015 and 2018 to prop up Southern Rock after Gibraltarian regulators found the business to be trading while technically insolvent.

His 2016 book The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign was ghostwritten by pro-Brexit journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

In 2016, the leaked Panama Papers indicated Banks along with Elizabeth Bilney were shareholders of British Virgin Islands company PRI Holdings Limited, which was the sole shareholder of African Strategic Resources Limited.

It was reported in March 2017 that Banks was no longer a member of UKIP.

Banks was born in Cheshire, England, and raised by his mother in Basingstoke, Hampshire; his father worked as a sugar plantation manager in various African countries.

From the age of 13 he attended a boarding school in Berkshire called Crookham Court, before being expelled for "an accumulation of offences", including the sale of lead stolen from the roofs of school buildings, and "high-spirited bad behaviour".

He then attended St Bartholomew's School in Newbury but was expelled again.

He returned to Basingstoke, where he sold paintings, vacuum cleaners, and then houses.

Banks was offered a junior job at the insurance market of Lloyd's of London.

According to The Guardian, by the age of 27, he was running a division of Norwich Union.

The article also claims that he spent a year working for Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company of Warren Buffett.

However, in another investigation, both Norwich Union and Warren Buffett reject Banks' claim that he worked for them.

Then, from an office above a bakery in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, Banks started a motorcycle insurance broker, Motorcycle Direct, and within a few years the company was big enough to sell for "a few million".

He used the money to found Commercial Vehicle Direct about which he says "within a very short period we were the largest van insurance company in the country".

The company's profits leapt to £16.7m for the first half of 2017 after recording a £284,000 profit in 2015 and a loss of £22,500 in 2016 despite a 40% increase in revenue.

Banks said that Eldon's business had been transformed by the same AI technology used in the Brexit campaign.

In November 2018 the National Crime Agency opened an investigation into Banks following concerns raised over the source of his funding.

In September 2019, the National Crime Agency dropped its investigations into Banks and Leave.EU.

The NCA found "no evidence that any criminal offences have been committed."

He was reported to have had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials as well as being offered business opportunities in Russia in the run-up to the Brexit referendum.

He has denied any wrongdoing and said: "There was no Russian money and no interference of any type."

In May 2020, The Electoral Commission, who had referred Banks to the NCA for investigation of these allegations, conceded Banks did not break electoral law during the 2016 EU referendum campaign.

Banks said he had been "completely vindicated" after reaching a settlement with the Electoral Commission.