Bank set to ditch toxic branding
ROYAL Bank of Scotland is to remove its RBS branding from high street branches in a bid to split from its toxic past.
More than 200 branches in Scotland and 300 in England and Wales will ditch the acronym this year, in a move that bosses say is designed to focus on local banking rather than global markets.
In Scotland, RBS will become Royal Bank of Scotland, while south of the Border the bank will be relaunched as Williams & Glyn – a name inspired by one of the firm’s historic subsidiaries and used by the group from 1970 to 1985.
Details of the plan have not yet been made public but it is thought signage and stationery will be among a list of costly changes to be made.
Last night, RBS would not say how much the rebrand is expected to cost.
The bank is still 72 per cent owned by the taxpayer, who footed a £46billion bill to bail it out in 2008 during the financial crisis. It plans to float or sell the Williams & Glyn operation by the end of next year.
But the bank will continue to be called RBS on the stock exchange. The group also has 1,000 NatWest branches across England and Wales, which are set to become the leading brand in these regions. It is understood that the company’s Ulster Bank will remain the same.
Since being bailed out after the 2008 financial crisis, RBS has been fined millions of pounds for Libor and foreign exchange rate rigging.
Disgraced former chief executive Fred Goodwin championed the RBS acronym, believing that the name Royal Bank of Scotland did not work for a global brand. Goodwin, nicknamed Fred the Shred for his ruthless cost-cutting, was eventually stripped of his knighthood in 2012 because of the ‘scale and severity of the impact of his actions’.
Last night, the bank’s current chief executive Ross McEwan said: ‘As the bank itself became a global brand, RBS became the global brand. Now I’m saying we no longer have global aspirations, we have local aspirations. So the individual brands should stand. Ulster Bank for example in Ireland, the Royal Bank of Scotland for Scotland, NatWest for England and Wales.
‘So we are a bank of brands and each one of those will stand for something quite different within their own communities.’
Between mid-March and May this year, RBS cut around 1,350 posts out of a workforce of 12,000 from RBS and NatWest branches across the country.