RBS considers name change as McEwan warns another decade of fallout lays ahead

The Royal Bank of Scotland is considering a rebrand in an attempt to evade the continued reputational damage that has assailed the lender as a result of a decade’s worth of fallout stemming from multiple misconduct scandals.

The chairman of the Edinburgh-based lender, which is still more than 60 per cent state-owned as a result of its £45 billion taxpayer bailout more than a 10 years ago, suggested the move in an interview with The Times newspaper.

Sir Howard Davies told the broadsheet that the name of the bank is currently under review as it looks to move focus away to investing in its other brands such as Coutts, Ulster Bank and Natwest.

Davies said continued reputational damage is still weighing RBS down.

The RBS is also struggling from its first dividend since the financial crash, agreeing last month to pay $4.9bn (£3.6bn) to US regulators to settle claims it mislead investors.

While RBS has not admitted the allegations put forward by US authorities, documents released by the US Department of Justice show RBS bankers admitted at the time that they were selling “total f***ing garbage” to investors and made light of destroying the housing market in the lead-up to the financial crisis.

Howard says “near-constant firefighting” in the bank’s leadership team has also put customers off.

RBS recently came at the bottom of recent service rankings by the Competition and Market Authority for both business and retail banking, and Sir Howard’s comments come as the bank’s chief executive also has warned that RBS’s tarnished reputation could still take another 10 years to recover.

Ross McEwan told the Press Association that while the bank has managed to regain its financial footing since its 2008 bailout in 2008 – recording its first annual profit in a decade this year – customers are still distrustful of the once “global titan”.

“There are two things that any financial service organisation has… one is our financial strength and the second is our reputation,” he said.

“And what RBS did 10 years ago, it had lost both of those.

“It got very close to collapse and with that went its financial reputation. And we’ve been hit with reputational issues as a consequence of what happened in the financial crisis, from conduct to litigation issues to GRG (the Global Restructuring Group) to all sorts of issues that over the last 10 years have embroiled this organisation.”