1 RBS and NatWest 2012 Customer Charter report
The Customer Charter 2012 Our knowlegeable staff will put your needs first We will do more to help when you need us most Your satisfaction with the quality of our service will be an essential part of how we reward our staff. Our branch staff will be accredited by the Chartered Banker Institute, to ensure they have the right knowledge to help you. If we make a mistake we will apologise and fix it, quickly and fairly. We will refund money lost from your account if you have been a victim of banking fraud, in keeping with our obligations. We will provide you with a free emergency cash service if your debit card is lost or stolen, and send you a new card the next day. We will be proactive in doing what we can to help customers who may be facing financial difficulty. We will provide convenient and quick service, however you choose to bank with us We will help to strengthen the communities in which we live and work We will serve 90% of customers in five minutes or less in our branches. We will answer at least 90% of customer calls in less than a minute, from our UK-based telephone centres, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We will continue to offer new and innovative mobile banking services that make banking faster and more convenient, wherever you are. We pledge to maintain banking services wherever we are the last bank in town, that is where the nearest alternative is more than 1 mile away. We will provide every secondary school pupil with access to MoneySense, our financial education programme. We will continue to offer all our staff a day of paid leave to help projects in their local community. In 2012 we continued to listen to you to evolve our Customer Charter to focus on the things you told us were important. This report highlights the progress we ve made. 2
Our knowledgeable staff will put your needs first Your satisfaction with the quality of our service will be an essential part of how we reward our staff. We want to make sure you are always happy with the service you receive from us. Last year we launched a new incentive system to reward staff for meeting high standards of customer service as well as the overall performance of their business. We did this to drive the right behaviours and to ensure that customer service is the top priority for all of our staff. In 2012, 88% of you told us you were extremely or very satisfied with the service you received when you visited us in branch or spoke to us on the phone. Our branch staff will be accredited by the Chartered Banker Institute to ensure they have the right knowledge to help you. We want to consistently offer the best quality of service possible which is why we set up the accreditation programme. 700 branch staff as well as 826 of our telephony staff have been accredited. A further 1,145 branch staff are working towards their accreditation in 2013. This training programme will continue through 2013 until all our Branch Customer Service Officers have been accredited. If we make a mistake we will apologise and fix it quickly and fairly. Unfortunately we do make mistakes. But once a mistake has been made, we know that how we put things right is most important to you. So in 2012 we continued to focus on improving making our complaints process quicker and simpler. This is reflected in our results which show 75% of customers who had reason to complain were fairly, very or extremely satisfied with the way their complaint was resolved. We aim to resolve complaints within 2 days, last year, 38% of complaints were resolved within this time. We need to investigate complaints thoroughly to make sure they are dealt with properly, so it sometimes takes longer than 2 days to resolve complaints. We still have more to do and we will continue to focus on improving the experience for our customers this year. Many of you were affected by the technical issues with our computer systems in June 2012. As soon as we became aware of the problem we did everything we could to ensure you could still access your money, including extending our branch opening hours, and opening on Sundays. We also made sure you weren t left permanently out of pocket as a direct result of these technical issues by checking all affected accounts, reviewing claims and refunding charges levied as a result of the problem. We want to make sure this doesn t happen again which is why over the next 3 years we are investing over 300 million to upgrade, enhance and strengthen the resilience of our systems. Some of these changes have already been made and we are committed to delivering further improvements in the future. 3
We will do more to help when you need us most We will refund money lost from your account if you have been a victim of banking fraud, in keeping with our obligations. If the worst happens we want to take the worry away as soon as possible. Our dedicated teams and systems work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to protect you from fraud. We have continued to learn and adapt to deal with the latest fraud trends and the changing circumstances they bring. Last year we refunded all customers who were victims of banking fraud through no fault of their own. We will provide you with a free Emergency Cash service if your debit card is lost or stolen, and send you a new card the next day. If your card is lost or stolen the most important thing to you is to get a new one back in your wallet or purse as soon as possible. Over 1 million customers had their replacement cards despatched to them the next working day last year. We re sorry to say that 0.5% weren t despatched the next day. We apologise to the customers who were affected by this and would like to reassure all of our customers that we will dispatch replacement cards the next working day. With our innovative, Emergency Cash service, you can also withdraw cash from any of our ATMs without a card. So, if your card goes missing, you re not stuck without funds. Over 90,000 customers took advantage of this service withdrawing more than 7.5m during 2012. We will be proactive in doing what we can to help customers who may be facing financial difficulty. We are here for you if you find yourself in financial difficulty. If you re having problems making payments or struggling to pay bills our staff will do all they can to help you. Last year our dedicated team spoke to over 165,000 customers who were showing early signs of financial difficulty to offer support and guidance. 4
We will provide convenient and quick service, however you choose to bank with us We will serve 90% of customers in 5 minutes or less in our branches. Your time is extremely important and we continued to work hard to reduce the amount of time you waited to be served in our branches. By the end of 2012 87% of you had told us you were served within 5 minutes. We also installed 119 Cash and Deposit Machines to help you pay in cash and cheques without having to wait for a cashier as well as recruiting an additional 125 staff to reduce the queues in our busiest branches. We will answer at least 90% of customer calls in less than a minute, from our UK-based telephone centres, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Last year we received over 31 million telephone calls and answered 89% of these within a minute. All our call centres remain in the UK with staff you can speak to 24 hours a day seven days a week. We will continue to offer new and innovative mobile banking services that make banking faster and more convenient, wherever you are. Our mobile app is changing the way many of our customers choose to bank with us. In 2012 we added more functionality to make banking from your mobile even easier. Customers can check balances, transfer money, view up to 7 years of historic transactions, make payments and even withdraw cash without needing to use their debit card. You can find out more about our mobile app by visiting natwest.com/mobile or rbs.co.uk/mobile 5
We will help to strengthen the communities in which we live and work We pledge to maintain banking services wherever we are the last bank in town, that is, where the nearest alternative is more than 1 mile away. We have continued to support the 247 communities where we are the last bank in town. We also continue to support remote communities across the UK with our 19 mobile banks. We will provide every secondary school pupil with access to MoneySense, our financial education programme. Financial education has never been more important so we expanded our commitment to include all secondary school pupils. Over the past year more than 40,000 MoneySense lessons have taken place with over 341,000 children learning how to manage their finances. We will continue to offer all our staff a day of paid leave to help projects in their local community. We are proud to support the communities in which we live and work. In 2012 our people volunteered more than 9,500 days worth of support to charities and good causes in their local communities. 6
Independent Assurance Statement Independent assurance statement by Deloitte LLP ( Deloitte ) to The Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc ( RBS ) on the Customer Charter Report 2012 ( Customer Charter Report ) for the 12 months ended 31 December 2012. What we looked at: scope of assurance work RBS Group has engaged us to perform limited assurance procedures on the following performance metrics that appear in the Customer Charter Report for RBS and NatWest Retail Bank for the year ended 31 December 2012. Performance Metrics Percentage satisfaction with branch service Percentage satisfaction with telephony service Volume of branch staff accreditations Percentage satisfaction with complaint resolution for branches Percentage satisfaction with complaint resolution for telephony Percentage of complaints resolved within two days Percentage of customers refunded who had money taken fraudulently from their account Volume of emergency cash withdrawals Value of emergency cash withdrawals Percentage of replacement cards despatched the next day by first class post Volume of calls handled by the dedicated pre-emptive team Percentage of customers served within 5 minutes Percentage of calls answered in less than 60 seconds Introduction of new Mobile Application services - Pre Mandated Payments, Pay Your Contacts and Historic Statement Data Volume of MoneySense lessons delivered Volume of pupils that received lessons Volume of employee volunteering days in the bank s time 7
What we did: assurance process and standards Engagement assurance standards We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements 3000 (ISAE 3000) issued by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) for carrying out assurance engagements on non-financial information. This is a limited assurance engagement, which is designed to give a similar level of assurance to that obtained in a review of interim financial information. A limited assurance procedures engagement excludes procedures such as testing of source data and operating effectiveness of controls and is substantially less in scope than a reasonable assurance engagement. Accordingly we do not provide reasonable assurance on those matters specified in this statement. Assurance procedures Limited assurance standard requires that we review the systems, processes and controls that deliver the performance data and results. Our work consisted primarily of making inquiries of company personnel and carrying out analytical procedures and sample tests as follows: understanding, analysing and testing on a non-statistical sample basis the collation, validation and reporting of the performance data by RBS in accordance with their definitions and basis for calculation which can be found at: rbs.com/2012basisofreporting; and reading and analysing the content of the Report against the findings of our work, industry practices and other relevant information and, as necessary, making recommendations for improvement. In addition, in relation to commitment numbers 8 and 10 we reviewed a non-statistical sample of assertions made within the report and compared these to supporting evidence provided by RBS. We did not review the preparation of data or the accuracy of supporting evidence for these assertions. What we found: our conclusions Based on the scope of our work and the assurance procedures we performed, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the selected performance indicators listed in the table above are in all material aspects, not fairly stated. Roles and responsibilities RBS s responsibilities The Directors are responsible for the preparation of the Customer Charter Report and for the information and statements contained within it. They are responsible for determining the Customer Charter goals, performance and for establishing and maintaining appropriate performance management and internal control systems from which the reported information is derived. Deloitte s responsibilities and independence Our responsibility is to independently express a conclusion on the Customer Charter Report as defined within the scope of work above to Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc in accordance with our letter of engagement. Our work has been undertaken so that we might state to RBS those matters we are required to state to them in this statement and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than RBS for our work, for this statement, or for the conclusions we have formed. Deloitte LLP, London, 10 April 2013 8