Our operating model means our customers and shareholders end up paying for parts of the business that cost too much and deliver too little in their interests.
This needs to change.
RBS needs a strategy that will address the weakness in our performance for customers, so that we can provide acceptable returns to our shareholders. The business review I have conducted has revealed our key challenges, but it has also given us a clear path to improve the bank.
On every dimension our opportunity to improve the relative and absolute performance of the bank is significant. It is my job to make sure our strategy for customers translates into value for our shareholders.
2013 financial performance
This bank has had an extraordinary five years. Cleaning up a £2.2 trillion balance sheet whilst addressing the many failings of the past has carried a very heavy cost, which shows in our results.
Even by recent standards, 2013 was a difficult year. Regulatory fines, wide-ranging customer complaints, technology problems and public questioning of our integrity all weighed heavily, and bring into sharp focus the job we have at hand.
For the full year, we reported a pre-tax loss of £8.2 billion. The loss includes £3.8 billion of legacy litigation, conduct and regulatory costs and £4.8 billion of impairments and other losses relating to the establishment of RBS Capital Resolution (RCR).
Looking at underlying performance, total income was down £2.3 billion for the year, primarily reflecting lower revenues from the re-sized Markets business while costs were only down £0.5 billion – pushing the cost:income ratio towards the worse end of our peer group at 67%.
Returns varied across our businesses, but only UK Retail and Wealth delivered returns above the cost of equity. That said, the bank continued to make progress despite our financial performance.
Our business milestones included completing the run-down of another £29 billion of Non-Core assets - ahead of plan and taking the total reduction since Non-Core was established to £230 billion - setting up the RCR unit and reducing risk-weighted assets, and hence our risk profile, by £66 billion, on a fully loaded Basel III basis.
We also cancelled the £8 billion Contingent Capital Facility with HM Treasury, reduced our stake in Direct Line Group to 28.5% - in line with our commitment to the EC - and we are in advanced discussions to restructure the Dividend Access share.
It is clear that the underlying performance over the last year underlines the need for us to shift the emphasis from restoring the balance sheet to recharging our performance.
Why we must change
Capital
The capital plan we announced in November outlined a number of concrete actions to place the bank on a sure footing. Among them, the creation of RCR and the flotation of Citizens Financial Group will allow us to target a Common Equity Tier 1 capital position of 12% or greater by the end of 2016.
The capital plan has been designed to allow us to focus without distraction on improving our operating performance.
We will do what it takes to reach and maintain a prudent capital position.
Cost and Complexity
There was a necessary complexity to running an organisation with a £2.2 trillion balance sheet, as ours was five years ago, but this need has reduced as we have scaled the bank dramatically down over recent years. We now need to simplify our structure and cost base to match.
RBS remains a complex bank. We can be hard to do business with, costly to operate, and complicated to work in. We have seven customer-facing divisions as well as RCR and central functions, many of which are duplicated across divisions. Across this we have hundreds of internal committees. These are costly barriers to interaction between our people and with our customers, meaning we lose out too many times on the opportunity to serve them with more products and services.
This complexity shows in our cost:income ratio, which reaches 73% when fully loaded to include the bank levy and restructuring costs. Reducing costs and divesting businesses in the bank will inevitably result in reduced staff levels. We do not yet have detailed plans for implementation and as always we will deal with such matters sensitively, talking to our staff before communicating any such changes.
Trust and Reputation
Behaviour and performance influence the perception of worth. RBS carries huge reputational discount due to the extent of bad headlines the bank attracts. This carries through into our customer and investor interaction and can only be solved by a sustained improvement in the quality of our earnings and meaningful change in the way we deal with customers.
Our customers like and trust the people they deal with, but not the bank itself. We can change this by moving more of the appropriate decision making and process management closer to the people who deal with customers.
Performance
Great companies know that quality service goes hand-in-hand with disciplined management; they chase down costs intelligently so they can invest more for their customers.
They prioritise and invest with relentless focus on the areas that deliver the strongest, most sustainable returns.
RBS has earned credibility for the execution of our financial restructuring. The same discipline and focus is now needed on our day-to-day operating performance to better deliver for the customer. The costs that subdue our performance need to be intelligently removed and redirected towards activities that enhance our earnings.
Our new strategy
We now have a strategy to deliver a sustainable bank with a clear ambition: we want to be number one for customer service, trust and advocacy, in every one of our chosen business areas by 2020.
Our ambition aims to deliver a bank that is more trusted than others in the UK. We will earn the trust of customers by serving them better than any other bank.
Quality service leads to repeat business and customer advocacy. Repeat business and higher advocacy leads to sustainable income. We won't compromise on this logic.
The bank will be structured to deliver this ambition by organising around the needs of our customers.
We will collapse seven operating divisions into three customer businesses that can understand our customers’ needs and provide appropriate, consistent services far better than we can across current silos.
Our support functions will be smaller, more expert and dedicated to helping the businesses succeed for customers. We will run highly disciplined and well managed conduct and risk functions to maintain safety and soundness.
This will be a highly effective bank and in the medium term we will aim to deliver a cost:income ratio (including bank levy, restructuring charges and, from 2015, the EU resolution fund charge) of around 55%, falling in the long term to around 50%.
The frontline of this bank is where we'll stand out. Accountable, trusted professionals will staff the perimeter of the bank and drive it forward. They will be supported by simple, effective processes on a sound technology platform.
Only 30% of our people today deal directly with the customer. By 2017 more than half will deal directly with the customer and all our people will be measured against our success in improving customer advocacy.
Our focus will be determined by where our customers need us, and where we can serve their needs better than anyone else.
The UK is our home market and our strongest market. It is also our biggest advantage. Our corporate customer trade flows mean we need a strong European and US presence, so this is where we will be. Our UK clients rely on inward investment, so we'll retain a presence in Asia.
Our three customer businesses will cover Personal & Business Banking, Commercial & Private Banking, and Corporate & Institutional Banking. Across the businesses we will have one management team, working to one joined-up plan.
The businesses will be built on franchises that can be number one for customers. We have a family of brands across the bank and will use these to deliver on our ambition.
Not every business in our current structure will be best placed to deliver on our strategy. Technology investment will enable some to improve service at a rate that outpaces the market, but others will not.
For those activities where we can't see a clear path to being number one, we will review on the basis of 'fix, close or dispose'. These will become clear as each of our three businesses defines its new customer franchises over the coming months.
The three businesses of the go-forward bank have been designed against a number of goals. Firstly, they will better serve customer needs than the existing operating divisions. Secondly, they will help eradicate duplication of cost in both the front and back office. Thirdly, they will position us to deliver a sustainable return on equity in each business.
Update on capital plan
We announced in November that we will target a fully loaded Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of 12% or greater by the end of 2016 which will principally be delivered through the Capital Resolution Group.
Ahead of today’s results we announced that we would take an additional £2.9 billion of charges for litigation and conduct related matters. While these charges were in our future capital plan, provisions were recognised in 2013 and reduced our fully loaded Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 ratio to 8.6% at the end of 2013.
So how do we get to our 12% 2016 target? This will primarily be due to the successful run-down of RCR and the IPO of Citizens, as well as further targeted risk-weighted asset reduction, which will continue to be the main drivers of our plan to deliver our 12% target by the end of 2016.
Citizens Financial Group
The cornerstone of the capital plan is the IPO of Citizens Financial Group in the United States. We have appointed advisers and this is on schedule for later this year.
RCR
The creation of RCR from 1 January 2014 originally identified £38 billion of third party assets that were highly capital intensive. This represented 5% of our funded balance sheet but used up 20% of our capital.
Mainly as a result of the increased impairments we have taken and significantly higher levels of disposals in Non-Core than had been forecast, the opening balance is £29 billion of third party assets and £65 billion of risk-weighted asset equivalents (RWAe). This reduction in assets has also resulted in a corresponding decrease in the bank’s funding requirements.
UK branch divestment
To meet our EC-mandated branch divestment, the Williams & Glyn brand will return to the high street via an IPO over the coming years. To achieve this we signed a deal with a consortium of investors led by Corsair Capital and Centerbridge Partners in September 2013. The business will require separation from RBS and this process is well under way.
Ulster Bank
The thinking behind every aspect of our new strategy applies to our business in the island of Ireland.
Consumers and businesses across the island of Ireland deserve a better banking service. To achieve this, however, we must change the way we currently organise our business in the Irish market place. We took the first major step at the end of 2013 when we announced our intention to remove £9 billion of the worst credit risks from the Ulster Bank balance sheet. Our second step is focused on improving customer experience and shareholder return.
As outlined in November, we are reviewing our business to make it viable and sustainable into the future. In this regard we are accelerating our strategy for the bank to improve service to our customers, reduce costs and simplify our operating model.
Our bank in Northern Ireland will benefit from a closer integration with our personal and business franchises in the rest of the United Kingdom. There are meaningful synergies in terms of investment, costs and customer experience from doing this. It is essential if we are to provide a more appealing and compelling service to our customers in Northern Ireland under the Ulster Bank brand.
In the Republic of Ireland we will continue to explore further opportunities to transform our business. We have a range of options but we are now clear on the goal; we will build on our position to be a compelling challenger bank to the domestic pillar banks.
Our customers in the island of Ireland need to know that we are committed to providing them with a great everyday banking service. We will finalise our plans in the coming months – but this is about a change in business strategy not a withdrawal from the market.
These moves are designed to position the bank to do more for our customers and consequently reward our shareholders for their patience.
Measures that matter
We will only succeed in delivering our goals if everyone who works in the bank is clear on the measures that matter. It is too easy to be distracted by measures that flatter progress on things that ultimately don’t count towards our ambition.
The measures we use must have credibility with customers and the wider public if we are to regain trust. And they must focus the bank relentlessly on improving returns for shareholders. It is abundantly clear to me that
we need to reward our existing shareholders for their patience and attract new ones based on our potential and performance.
Measure 1: Customer
We will target the best Net Promoter Score in the market in the long term in each of our chosen business areas. The most trusted bank in the UK in the long term.
Measure 2: Efficiency
We will aim to deliver a cost:income ratio (including bank levy, restructuring charges and, from 2015, the EU resolution fund charge) of approximately 55% in the medium term, falling in the long term to around 50%. On the same basis, we target a reduction in our costs to approximately £8 billion in the medium term.
Measure 3: Returns
Our overall targeted return on tangible equity (RoTE) will be approximately 9-11% in the medium term. Our long-term RoTE target is 12% plus.
Measure 4: Capital strength
We will target a CET1 capital ratio, on a fully loaded Basel III basis, of 12% or greater by the end of 2016. Our targeted leverage ratio, on the same basis, will be 3.5-4% in the medium term and 4% or above in the long term.
These simple measures mean we will strike a permanent balance between the needs of our stakeholders.
How we’ll do business
The scale of the challenge we have faced over the last few years taught us a simple fundamental lesson: you cannot succeed at your customers’ expense. This is why last year we agreed a very simple purpose for the bank: to serve customers well.
Our future is not about us, it’s about our customers. These words greet our employees as they walk into our offices every day. They have come to represent a shorthand for what went wrong, but also what we need to get right.
Although we remain in the shadow of our past conduct failings, we have a clear and universal set of values that bind the bank together.
Serving customers
We exist to serve customers. We earn their trust by focusing on their needs and delivering excellent service.
Working together
We care for each other and work best as one team. We bring the best of ourselves to work and support one another to realise our potential.
Doing the right thing
We do the right thing. We take risk seriously and manage it prudently. We prize fairness and diversity and exercise judgement with thought and integrity.
Thinking long term
We know we succeed only when our customers and communities succeed. We do business in an open, direct and sustainable way.
These values are the basis for how we lead, how we reward, how we make decisions and how we treat our customers and each other. They are not yet etched in stone, but become stronger the more they are tested.
They are core to us succeeding as a bank.
Conclusion
RBS isn’t just any bank. Few, if any, comparisons do justice to the scale of the turnaround that RBS required.
We’ve got to a point of safety and soundness through a steady focus and patient determination. There will be more things from our past that come back to haunt us, but they will be fewer in number.
Over time, with steady focus and disciplined delivery, the new RBS will emerge. The businesses we operate will be highly effective and relentless in their pursuit of delivering service that makes us number one for customers.
We will be simple to do business with, free from distractions and supported by a strong capital base.
The outcome will be a bank that is truly trusted by customers.
