The History & Scandals of the Royal Bank of Scotland

Originally referred to as the “New Bank” but in 1727 became known as the Royal Bank of Scotland and in May 1728, the Royal Bank of Scotland invented the overdraft which is still considered to be an innovation in modern banking.

The bank opened its first branch office outside of Edinburgh in 1783 when they opened up a branch in Glasgow. In the first part of the 19^th century, branches opened up quickly in other places around Scotland such as Dundee, Greenock and Port Glasgow. Soon after this, the first London branch followed which was opened up in 1874 but their expansion in to England was put on hold until after World War I.

They acquired a number of small English banks after the First World War including London-based Drummonds Bank in 1924 and Williams Deacon’s Bank in 1930 to name just a couple and they started re-branding these banks to the Royal Bank of Scotland in 1985.

Recent History, Fines and the PPI Scandal

They haven’t been entirely fair in recent years to their customers, most notably in 2011 when they prevented their ‘Basic’ account holders from using ATMs of most of their rivals. They were still able to use NatWest, Tesco, Morrisons and the Post Office ATMs though.

Things didn’t get much better though, in 2012 there were a series of computer issues which prevented their customers from accessing their accounts too.

This is only scratching the surface though as far as RBS are concerned. Just like the majority of the banks and lenders in this country, they’re guilty as charged when it comes to mis-sold PPI. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group which consists of the Royal Bank of Scotland, NatWest Bank, Drummonds Bank, Ulster Bank and Coutts has set aside an enormous £3 billion in order to cover themselves for their part in the PPI scandal.

On top of the staggering £3 billion they’ve already set aside, they were fined £14.5m for their false advice over mortgages in August this year. On top of this, they’ve been fixing Libor rates and have also received a £390 million fine for their part in the Libor rate-fixing scandal; hardly advocates of good behaviour.

Royal Bank of Scotland PPI Claims

The big problem for RBS is the PPI scandal. Still on-going and with a big pot of money to pay customers out of, they will be hoping that it all blows over soon but we won’t let something like this go away that easily.

We’ve dealt with thousands of claims for our customers from Barclays to HSBC, Halifax to RBS, we’ve covered them all the way down to the likes of mis-sold Marks and Spencer PPI and Liverpool Victoria PPI.

Have you had a loan, mortgage or credit card from RBS? If you’ve lost your paperwork, thrown it out or just no longer have access to it that doesn’t matter, we can still launch your RBS PPI claim. You just need to fill in the claim form to the right hand side of this page and leave the rest up to us.

RBS PPI Claims