The Royal Bank of Scotland warned Sunday that it is planning "for the worst" amid increased talk of no deal over Brexit. Chief executive Ross McEwan said RBS is setting up a new European subsidiary in Amsterdam to serve customers on the continent, but is awaiting for approval of its licences.
With Britain and the European Union yet to agree on what their future relationship should look like, McEwan told the BBC that RBS may lose business without a deal. "If we don't get the right licences, and we don't get them in time, that could create major problems for our customers and for the bank," McEwan said.
"We are planning, unfortunately, for the worst." McEwan said RBS had already deployed 150 staff to Amsterdam, and if regulators failed to approve trading licences for the operations, it would stop offering services to some of its European customers.
"In the next couple of months, we're going to have to make some decisions... we're going to have to think about which European customers we may not be able to bank," he said. Britain is set to leave the EU on March 30, 2019. The two sides want to reach a divorce deal by October or November to give their parliaments time to endorse it.
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