ROYAL Bank of Scotland chief executive Ross McEwan has said that the rapid uptake of mobile and digital banking as well as advances in financial technology mean the organisation is becoming “more and more a financial services company with good technology” than a traditional bank, writes Margaret Taylor.

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley European Financials Conference, Mr McEwan said the bank, which is currently piloting technology that will allow customers to make loan applications in 15 minutes, “has to stay relevant to customers through technology”.

“We did the first loan on [Esme, a platform that deals with applications from small business customers] two weeks ago and instead of it taking weeks from start to finish it took 15 minutes,” he said. “That, in banking in the UK today, is an exercise that can take weeks but if banking in the UK doesn’t wake up to the fact that people are coming in with financial technology platforms that can do that we’ve got a problem.”

Mr McEwan added that the bank is constantly on the look-out for technologies that could be used to make customer experiences simpler.

“We do look at a lot of fintech operations and we have two people in San Francisco,” he said. “Their job is to scout the market on our behalf and we’ve picked up some pretty good technology because of that.”

Separately, Mr McEwan said that when it comes to Brexit the bank is “planning for the worst and hoping for the best”. He added that the bank “had optionality” for maintaining access to the EU as it has licences in Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany that it could “repurpose”.