After a programme of branch closures across Scotland, RBS yesterday announced that it had doubled its profits and was paying a near £1 billion dividend to the UK Government.
The announcement came with a warning about Brexit from chief executive Ross McEwan, who has been credited with turning the bank around from failed would-be global giant to a UK- and Ireland-facing operation.
Asked about Brexit’s effects, McEwan said: “What we’re seeing already in the market place – and this has been happening over the last few quarters – is larger businesses have been pausing on their investments in the UK.
“Over time that does trickle down into small businesses who support those larger businesses and therefore jobs and money that comes into this economy, and we’ve certainly seen that and I’ve called that out in the last quarter.
“We have a very small period of time left until the end of March and it’s time that our politicians got to the conclusion so that we can get some certainty going forward. The longer this drags on, the harder it is for business to invest and it does impact on everyday people in this economy.”
The RBS group reported a pre-tax operating profit of £3.4bn and a bottom line attributable profit of £1.6bn for 2018.
The bank proposed a full year ordinary dividend of 3.5 pence per share, and a special dividend of 7.5 pence per share, in addition to the dividend paid at its last interim results.
Put together, RBS, which is still more than two-thirds owned by the taxpayer following the £42bn bailout in 2008, will have returned £1.6bn to shareholders, and around £1bn to the Treasury in dividends.
The Tory Government is anxious to sell its remaining shares in the bank and RBS said yesterday that it has “shareholder approval to participate in a directed buyback should the government seek to dispose of a portion of its shares.”
McEwan said: “This is a good performance in the face of economic and political uncertainty, with bottom line profits more than double what we achieved the previous year.
“We are also announcing an intention to pay back more capital to shareholders and almost £1bn is set to be returned to UK taxpayers for 2018.
“With strong capital and liquidity levels, we are well positioned to support the UK economy.”
McEwan’s total pay rose from £3.5 million to £3.6m and the bank will pay £355m in bonuses in a year when RBS took severe criticism from customers and politicians for closing branches, which the bank said was the result of many more customers switching to digital banking.
The evidence for customer dissatisfaction with RBS came with the latest Net Promoter Score (NPS) analysis of the bank’s performance.
NPS is a management tool that can be used to gauge the loyalty of a bank’s customer relationships and is claimed to be as an alternative to traditional customer satisfaction research.
Douglas Blakely, editor of Retail Banker International, tweeted: “Lot of interesting stuff & even some positive metrics in @RBS results but as for the NPS scores?-eye-wateringly worst in class-RBS business banking -36 about worst I have ever seen ever from any bank and RBS retail down from -6 a year ago to -17 at end Q4.”
A spokesperson for RBS said: “We know we can do more to improve the experience for customers in certain aspects of our service. We’re investing in dedicated teams focussed on making targeted improvements for customers and rolling out continuous changes to make banking easier, such as our digital AI-powered assistant Cora, or software to help reduce queuing times in branches.”
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