RBS chief executive defends Welsh bank closures

The RBS chief executive has defended branch closures, saying cheque usage is down 17% this year, ATM use is down 15% and branch network use is down 7%.

On a visit to Cardiff, Ross McEwan also said 82% of new business accounts are opened online or by mobile phone.

He estimated that small and medium-sized firms in Wales could be missing out on £1bn due to low productivity.

And he said better technology, and improved staff benefits and well-being would help boost productivity.

Royal Bank of Scotland announced in May it is closing 162 branches across England and Wales.

That includes four branches in Wales - Barry, Wrexham, Cardiff Docks and Colwyn Bay.

In December it announced it was to close 20 Natwest branches.

Mr McEwan also said that the bank, which includes Natwest, was improving lending to SMEs and was working to rebuild trust after business customers were badly treated by RBS following the financial crisis.

The bank has faced criticism from business owners, MPs and the regulator over how its "business turnaround" department Global Restructuring Group (GRG) handled firms it deemed to be in financial distress.

Flintshire builder, Clive May, lost his company after the GRG department took over the handling of its banking.

While not commenting on individual cases, Mr McEwan said: "The situation with GRG was between 2008 and 2013 and I've said many many times that we didn't treat customers well enough in that period of time.

"When a business is having major difficulties they need someone beside them, helping them out, and I just don't think we were there for our customers and that's been absolutely proved.

"But we're rebuilding this bank. We're doing a lot of work with SMEs. Every interaction for us needs to be a great interaction with our customers to rebuild the trust in this bank."

The banking trade association, UK Finance, has reported that the value of new loans to SMEs in the UK remained fairly static last year though Wales has bucked the trend with more loans approved than in the same period in 2016.

"We could have been accused three or four years ago of not doing enough for SMEs but I don't think that can be an accusation against Natwest.

"In the SME market, we've had about 3% growth where the industry's been about 1% so we're doing more than our share," Mr McEwan said.