Ross McEwan, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, wants you to know that he is very, very serious about turning the bank around.
In The Guardian on Sunday, Mr. McEwan offered a catalog of the bank’s past failings, complete with details about how his firm did a poor job of serving its customers.
“In the rush for growth and profit, RBS forgot what banking is about,†Mr. McEwan wrote. “The bank valued least the people it should have valued most: its customers.â€
It’s not the first time Mr. McEwan, who said he would forgo a bonus in 2013 and 2014, has acknowledged shortcomings at the bank. Mr. McEwan, who was named chief executive in August, has previously pledged to change the culture at RBS, which took a bailout from the British government in 2008 and is under pressure to repay the government and restructure its operations.
In the last five years, much has been done to defuse the bank’s legacy of excess, to clean up the culture and build a strong, stable platform for the bank. But I am acutely aware that there is still much more to do.
Organisational strategies can often be complex. For me, the next chapter for RBS is simple. It is about establishing one guiding principle that goes from the very top down to the smallest branch. Our employees who deal with customers every day understand their needs and do the best for them - this customer-focused DNA needs to run throughout the bank. We need to remember - and then never forget - that the customer is why we are in business. We need to change our behaviour at every level to reflect this simple truth. To move from stability to renewal, we need to first address and then clean up every aspect of how we treat customers.
Read the rest at The Guardian.
