Retail Markets – Retail
Above: In September, Retail Markets launched its Revolve account for 11–18 year olds. Customers can design and personalise the look of their debit card.
Below: Working closely with RBS Insurance, Retail Markets has made excellent progress in selling home insurance through the RBS and NatWest brands.
Highlights
- Among major high street banks, RBS and NatWest are number one and number two, respectively, for customers who say they are ‘extremely satisfied’ with their main current account provider.
- With 2,278 RBS and NatWest branches, our network is the UK’s largest. We opened, upgraded or refurbished 224 branches in 2007.
- 50% of first year full-time undergraduates in England and Wales with a student account have one with RBS or NatWest.
Contribution (£m)
Our focus on customer service, strong products and a measured approach to risk were the foundations for success in 2007. We originated more personal loans through branches and fewer through direct channels. Recognising consumers’ shift from borrowing to saving we focused on selling savings and investment products and NatWest opening more than one million new savings accounts.
In Business Banking we maintained our leading share of the SME market and invested in people, technology and service quality to secure future growth, including returning 500 managers to branches where they can work more closely with customers.
Tesco Personal Finance celebrated its tenth birthday, attracting 1.6 million new accounts, taking the total above 5.2 million.
2007 was another successful year for our credit card partnership with Bank of China. A total of 2.3 million new cards were issued across all channels, and our strength as a co-brand partner was reflected in seven new co-brand deals with major companies in China, including one with Air China.
Retailer Solutions – the number one merchant acquirer
in the UK and number three worldwide – benefited from
consumers’ growing preference for cards over cash, and
for e-shopping. These helped boost transactions by 11%,
with online purchases up 39%.
Retail Markets – Wealth Management – Next
© 2008