New Head of R.B.S. Plans to Emphasize Retail Business

LONDON â€" Five years after the Royal Bank of Scotland was saved from collapse by a capital infusion from the British government, the newly anointed chief executive, Ross McEwan, said on Tuesday that the bank must win back the trust of its customers.

“It is important to me that we rebuild the pride of this organization, we rebuild the connection with our customers and we repay the U.K. for the money and the faith they put in us,” Mr. McEwan said in a speech to employees Tuesday. “We are such a big part of this economy. We need to take our place in it.”

The 56-year-old Mr. McEwan joined the bank a little over a year ago as head of its retail business.

Royal Bank of Scotland remains 81 percent owned by taxpayers after it received billions of dollars in a government bailout during the financial crisis.

The British finance ministry is expected to decide in the coming weeks whether to recommend that the bank move its poorly performing loans into a separate legal entity, potentially easing pressure on the bank going forward.

Last month, Royal Bank of Scotland separately announced plans to sell a stake in its branch network to a consortium of investors led by Corsair Capital and Centerbridge Partners. The bank was ordered to sell more than 300 branches in its £600 million, or $974 million, network to satisfy European Union rules over state aid.

“Ross is a customer banker through and through and is determined to transform the bank into a real asset for the U.K. economy,” the chairman of RBS, Sir Philip Hampton, said in a statement.

A New Zealand native with extensive experience in retail banking, Mr. McEwan said Tuesday that he wanted R.B.S. to be “absolutely customer focused” and compared the task to his time at the executive in charge of the retail bank at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Commonwealth Bank, during that time, went from a reputation of having the worst customer service in Australia to the best, Mr. McEwan said.

“We have to make it really easy for those people who deal with customers to serve our customers,” he said. “I’ve seen in this organization that we are just too difficult to deal with in too many situations.”

He went on: “We need, as an organization, to actually start taking away those barriers so we can again begin serving our customers well. But, more importantly, we need to support our people to serve our customers well.”