Secret dossier: Emails implicate senior managers
AN official report into RBS’s Global Restructuring Group found emails that put senior managers at the heart of a plan to plunder small firms for cash.
The FCA report’s authors, financial research firm Promontory, said they made a decision early on in their review to look at appraisals of staff.
‘This followed the release of various emails suggesting an undue focus by management on fee generation early in the relevant period,’ the full unpublished report says.
The finding that priority was being given to squeezing fees out of customers, who they should have been helping back to financial health was included in a previous summary of the report.
But, in a highly significant omission, separate conclusions that management knew or should have known of the issue were excised from the published FCA summary.
The regulator is close to completing a second phase of the review looking at the root cause of the problems in GRG ‘and whether ot not any inappropriate treatment of customers was known about and/or sanctioned by management within RBS Group.’
The full Promontory dossier contains copious detail on reports produced for the GRG board.
These ‘board packs’ had a greater focus on financial considerations than on ‘returning customers to satisfactory’ – in other words, they paid more attention to making money for the bank than on saving firms.
RBS sources suggested the emails were from regional managing directors rather than board members.
The bank said: ‘It would be inappropriate for the bank to comment until the FCA has concluded its investigation.’