Safety and Security

The security of our customers' money remains an important priority as does the safety of our people in the workplace.

  1. Overview
  2. Global Citizenship
  3. Consumer Issues
  4. Supporting Enterprise
  5. Employee Engagement
  6. Safety and Security

Combating money laundering

In 2008, one in every five alerted transactions was correctly identified as suspect – a five-fold improvement on 2007.

Preventing fraud

  • In the US, deposit fraud has dropped by 12% following the implementation of a new fraud review of all accounts opened.
  • Our dedicated investigations unit prevented £22.6 million in potential fraud through profiling criminal behaviours.
  • Despite an increase in physical attacks on ATMs across the industry, RBS has seen a fall in loss levels and attempted incidents against our measures.

Helping our customers

During 2008, the RBS group:

  • launched a Security Centre website (rbs.co.uk/global/f/security.ashx) to provide customers with information on security and fraud issues. In the six months since launch, the site has received an average of 65,000 customer visits per month.
  • Accelerated the rollout of our card reader devices so that 3 million customers now benefit from enhanced online security
  • Achieved 84% customer satisfaction rate from victims of fraud with the service received
  • Introduced a text messaging method of keeping our customers informed on the progress of the recovery of their funds

Ensuring employee safety and security

We take the security of our staff very seriously and make every effort to minimise the risk of personal attacks.

RBS group’s approach to physical security helped to shape the new Bank of England industry standards, and RBS also sits on the Physical Security Standards committee for APACS.

Aside from physical security, the Group closely monitors the number of employee incidents.

In 2008, in the UK and Ireland:

  • The number of reportable incidents fell from 240 in 2007 to 184, an overall reduction of 23%
  • There were a total of 201 RIDDOR reports made compared to 254 in 2007
  • The number of all incidents decreased 7% to 2,401

Further information is available in the 2008 Safety, Health and Wellbeing Report (PDF, 896KB)

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