RBS boss says bank is ready for chaos of ‘no deal’

Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan has warned that the bank is now “preparing for the worst” as the prospect of a no Brexit deal becomes more likely.

Mr McEwan said the still more than 60 per cent state-owned lender may have to shed a number of business customers in such a scenario and 150 RBS staff had been deployed to Amsterdam to set up a new operation serving the bank’s European customers.

He said the Dutch outpost was still awaiting final approval on licences for the operation but it will be in place should the UK fall off the cliff edge when it leaves the EU in March next year.

In an interview with BBC Scotland, Mr McEwan said: “We are planning, unfortunately, for the worst.

“If there is no agreement and we fall out of Europe, we have to be ready for our customers.

“So we’re setting up an operation in Amsterdam, awaiting final approval for the correct licences.

“We’re having to put a number of our senior team and our systems and processes to move our European customers across into that entity for our markets business and our corporates.

“If we don’t get the right licences, and we don’t get them in time, that could create major problems for our customers and for the bank.”

Mr McEwan said that if the bank failed to secure trading licences for its Amsterdam operation, it would be unable to provide services to some of its European customers.

He added: “In the next couple of months, we’re going to have to make some decisions, to make sure we’ve got the licences and if we don’t, we’re going to have to think about which European customers we may not be able to bank.”