"I was fired by a bank because I had bowel cancer. Now, I've been victimised again"

Adeline Willis says NatWest ruined her career. Between 2013 and 2020, Willis had a sequence of increasingly senior roles in NatWest's risk and compliance team in London, resulting in a two year period as head of operational continuity in its "resolution centre of excellence" on a salary of £160k. But when a spate of health issues hit Willis and her family, the bank swiftly dispensed with her. 

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In August 2019, Willis was diagnosed with early stage colon cancer. In autumn 2019 her brother and mother were diagnosed with cancer too. In February 2020, Willis underwent cancer surgery. And then in May 2020, NatWest fired her.   

Willis successfully sued NatWest for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination. She received a comparatively modest £90k ($122k) payout in 2023, but she says she's been unable to find a fulltime job ever since: "The case makes it difficult for me to get another full-time job in banking. There's an inherent prejudice against anyone who's been to an employment tribunal." 

Aged 47, Willis says she's too old to retrain in anything that would pay anything like as much as the job was she was doing five years ago. Instead, she's been working as a contractor. "People are less bothered when you're contracting," she says. "It's about your delivery and I have a long history of delivering!" 

However, if Willis could get another full-time job, she would. Therefore, when a recruiter from NatWest unexpectedly sent her a message last year about a full-time role, she didn't dismiss the prospect entirely. "I wouldn't really like to work for NatWest again, but I was unemployed at the time," says Willis. "Sometimes you have to swallow your pride and crack on."

Willis says she had a follow-up call with the NatWest recruiter, who said she seemed a good fit for the job, which Willis calculated could pay £200k+ including salary and bonus. She claims the recruiter promised to get back to her with interview details. The bank then contacted her and said it wasn't interested after all.  

Willis suspects that NatWest put a stop to her recruitment when it realised her history. "They're still discriminating against me," she claims. She is now suing the bank again, for victimisation and injury to feelings. 

NatWest denies it has done anything wrong. A spokeperson for the bank said: “Adeline Willis was not offered an interview for the role because her CV did not indicate that she had the experience or expertise required to do the job." The bank intends to defend the claim.

Willis' new case is reminiscent of that being brought by Carmen Chevalier-Firescu, a former equity derivatives saleswoman, who argued that HSBC didn't hire her in 2018 because she'd brought a previous discrimination case against Barclays. 

Late last year, Chevalier-Firescu defeated an attempt by HSBC to have her case struck out. She's waiting for a new hearing. "My claim shows what happens to women if they dare enforce the laws that are supposed to protect us," she told us at the time.

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