Royal Bank of Scotland will today outline plans to invest £175 million in the institution's retail banking business north of the Border, with a further £450m to be spent on hardware for its Edinburgh information technology centre.
Chairman Sir Philip Hampton will tell shareholders at RBS's annual meeting at its Gogarburn headquarters, on the outskirts of the capital, that the investments will be made over the next three years.
However, Sir Philip is also expected to face discontent from shareholders over £607 million of staff bonuses awarded during a year when it lost £5.2 billion.
Payouts by the 81% state-owned bank have infuriated investors after a "chastening" 2012 when a £390 million settlement for Libor rate-fixing, another £1.1 billion of mis-selling provisions and a £175 million IT fiasco drove losses deeper from £1.2 billion in 2011.
But the bank will argue that it is on a stronger footing and should be ready for a return to the private sector by next year.
The £175m investment in the retail banking business will include branch refurbishment and new automated teller and deposit machines, with the aim of improving RBS's service to its customers.
This investment is expected to have a positive impact on jobs, although it is thought Sir Philip will not detail any figures regarding this.
The £450m investment in hardware at RBS's Edinburgh IT centre is aimed at improving the "resilience" of the bank's group-wide information technology.
RBS suffered a high-profile IT meltdown last summer, which locked customers out of their accounts.
Sir Philip will also update shareholders today on progress in rebuilding RBS, which was bailed out by the UK taxpayer after coming close to collapse in autumn 2008. In an interview last month, Ross McEwan, chief executive officer of RBS's UK retail banking division, revealed about 10% of RBS's UK branches were likely to be axed. He said RBS would consider any closure of the last bank in town on "individual merits".
RBS, which is about 81%-owned by the taxpayer, has around 300 branches in Scotland. It has around 2050 branches UK-wide, including 316 which it has been ordered to sell by the European Commission.
Mr McEwan has warned RBS's UK retail banking workforce will fall further from its current level of about 38,000, but he declined to estimate by how much.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article