RBS chief Ross McEwan has been told to ‘get his act together’ by the boss of the UK financial watchdog over the processing of compensation claims by small firms it drove to bankruptcy.
The part-taxpayer owned bank has set aside £400 million to cover the bill arising from the activities of its controversial Global Restructuring Group during the 2008 banking crisis.
Andrew Bailey, Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority, made the ‘get his act together’ comments to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee.
Mr Bailey told MPs it was “unfortunate” the Edinburgh-based bank has disagreed with findings from its report over the bank’s treatment of small businesses.
He said the bank should have accepted its findings, and blamed those disputes for delaying the release date of the interim report.
“I think the report is strongly critical of RBS and I think it is, frankly, unfortunate that RBS have not in a sense accepted that, I think, more readily,” Mr Bailey added.
“I think they should do, because a lot of ... time and a lot of effort and a lot of work has been done on this.”
In a letter to the MPs, Mr McEwan said ‘we deeply regret the mistakes we have made in the past’ regarding some of the division’s customers.
He added: “We fully accept that we did not, in all cases, fully comply with our own policies or always meet the standards of service that we set ourselves.”
He said they “clearly acknowledge” that the bank could have “done better” for business customers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here