Bank chiefs made promise to customers.. and broke it

It must be rather inconvenient for the generously remunerated executives of RBS that they remain partly owned by the public.

Bankers prefer to make what are euphemistically described as diff icult decisions at the stroke of a pen.

The less scrutiny from customers, the better.

Unfortunately, RBS remain in something of a tricky situation in that regard as 72 per cent of shares in the bank are owned by the Government.

It means their every move is watched like a hawk by ordinary folk still affected by the banking crash.

People haven’t forgotten the sense of outrage from that collapse nearly 10 years ago.

The haven’t forgotten the promise made by the bank in their charter in 2010 promising never to close local branches, even if they were the last in town.

That’s why the announcement to ditch branches in Melrose and Barra, Dunbar and Renfrew and Kilwinning and Saltcoats has been greeted with such disgust.

That’s why the timing of the announcement, a few weeks before Christmas, is so sickening.

RBS have made victims of customers in our most remote communities.

Older customers and local small business owners wi l l suf fer dispropor t ionately. There isn’t much sign that the bank’s leaders in Edinburgh and London really get that though.

The bland statement released on Friday included the claim that only one per cent of customers now use a branch regularly. The term “regularly” is so vague here that this becomes meaningless. But we can all safely assume branches aren’t seen as making enough cash for RBS. So they have to go and to hell with the consequences.

Oddly, RBS’s huge pay packets and bonuses for top executives remain unaffected.

So does the bank’s multi-million-pound sponsorship deal with the Six Nations rugby championship.

It is rebranded as the NatWest Six Nations but that bank are now a subsidiary, owned by RBS.

The plight of a pensioner trying to cash a postal order in Campbeltown will feel a long way away when you’re quaffing Joseph Perrier Grande Marque in Murrayfield’s hospitality boxes.

We visited retail banking director Les Matheson at home yesterday. He came to his intercom but declined to talk.

RBS customers should take a similar approach. Write an email the people at the very top.

Challenge the top brass who take these decisions and hope to get away with them. Let’s not make it easy for them.

People haven’t forgotten the sense of outrage from that collapse nearly 10 years ago