The litigation burden continued to recede for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) this week, after the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) decided to take no further action against the banking group or senior management over the treatment of customers transferred to its Global Restructuring Group.
The regulator said that although RBS “fell well short” of expected standards in its treatment of GRG customers – small business clients that ran into difficulties – its ability to act was constrained because commercial lending was largely unregulated. Action against senior management was also difficult because it found no evidence that they had specifically “sought to treat customers unfairly”. RBS chairman Howard Davies said in a statement: “The way the bank deals with business customers in financial difficulty is fundamentally different now.”
