Stuart Holloway, 48, of Bury, Greater Manchester, worked within the GRG division at RBS’s Edinburgh office on St Andrew Square from 2010, having joined the bank in 2005.

Prosecutors said that between 2012 and 2016, Mr Holloway used threats and intimidation to extort money from customers who were already in a vulnerable position, offering in return to reduce or remove their debt liabilities, refrain from withdrawing loan facilities, or allow them to transfer their accounts away from GRG to another lender.

In one instance, Mr Holloway allegedly warned a customer that unless a substantial sum was paid, their account would be “managed by others” – a threat interpreted as meaning the loss of their company. That customer paid him £366,100. In another case, he extorted £154,447 and demanded use of a golf club membership from a business owner who feared losing his livelihood. Prosecutors described his conduct as placing customers in a state of “alarm and apprehension”.

Mr Holloway entered guilty pleas on two charges of bribery at Edinburgh Sheriff Court earlier this week. Pleas of not guilty were accepted on the remaining charges, and a spokesman for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service confirmed there were no further outstanding matters. Sentencing is scheduled for 22 April.

His crimes took place against a backdrop of intense scrutiny of the GRG, a unit nominally established to help struggling businesses but which instead came to be seen as systematically harmful to the very companies it was supposed to support. A 2013 report by entrepreneur and government adviser Lawrence Tomlinson alleged that GRG was destroying viable businesses, and a subsequent report commissioned by the Financial Conduct Authority, completed in 2014 but not published until 2018, found evidence of widespread mistreatment. RBS eventually apologised and established a redress scheme for affected businesses, The Times reports.

Mr Holloway was suspended by RBS in 2016 and left on a voluntary redundancy package in May of that year. A customer reported his conduct to the bank the following year, and RBS alerted Police Scotland five months later. The case was first revealed by The Times in 2018, the same year that then-chief executive Ross McEwan apologised to MPs after being accused by Nicky Morgan, then chairwoman of the Treasury select committee, of having withheld relevant information about GRG during questioning.

RBS is now part of NatWest Group.

A spokesperson for the banking group said: “This criminal activity is totally unacceptable and relates to the unauthorised, private behaviour of an individual, which fell entirely outside the bank’s policies and processes for the treatment of customers.”

NatWest said it would consider the evidence presented at sentencing before determining what further action might be appropriate, but did not comment on whether those who were extorted would be compensated.