ASA Adjudication on Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc
Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc
36 St Andrew Square
Edinburgh
EH2 2YB
Date:
15 February 2012
Media:
Television
Sector:
Financial
Number of complaints:
2
Complaint Ref:
A11-164050
Ad
Two TV ads for Natwest and The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), in June 2011:
a. The first ad, for Natwest, showed scenes in which Natwest employees were featured in various locations talking about Natwest's achievements over the past year and their aims for the future. In one scene two women in Natwest uniforms were shown outside a Natwest bank on a deserted coastal road. One of the women said, "… continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town."
b. The second ad, for Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), had the same script as ad (a) but featured different characters and settings. The statement "… continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town" was delivered by an RBS employee shown walking up a grass verge, with a castle in the background, and then shown in front of an RBS branch. In a following scene an RBS mobile bank was shown driving along a remote island road.
Issue
1. A local councillor and the Campaign for Community Banking Services (CCBS) challenged whether ad (a) and the claim "… continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town" was misleading and could be substantiated because they believed that there was at least one place, Farsley in Yorkshire, in which Natwest had closed a branch despite being the last bank; and
2. CCBS also challenged whether ad (b) misleadingly implied that RBS would retain branches and their opening hours, because they understood that in some locations RBS had substantially reduced opening hours, or replaced branches with a visit from a mobile bank.
CAP Code (Edition 12)
Response
1. Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (RBS) said the complainant was correct in saying that their Farsley branch had closed. They said the decision to close it was not taken lightly and they remained committed to offering local banking services where they were needed and regularly used by customers. They said, unfortunately, usage of the Farsley branch had fallen substantially and, with several other branches very nearby, it was no longer viable to keep it open.
RBS pointed out that the ad stated that their commitment was to continue providing "banking services" wherever they were the last bank in town and argued that it therefore did not go as far as to say that they would commit to keeping all branches open. They said customers in the Farsley area could still receive a full banking service from their Pudsey branch which was just over a mile and a half away, and that their Greengates or Horsforth branches were both within two and half miles and offered car parking. They said, in other parts of the UK, where providing a full branch-based service had not been viable, they had also provided their Mobile Bank service and customers could also bank with them online or over the phone, 24 hours a day. They said that no other branch that was the last branch in its town or locality had been closed during the 12 months preceding the ad.
RBS said they had set themselves stretching targets in the Customer Charter in 2011 and kept the public fully informed as to how they were progressing through an independent audit report published every six months, from Deloitte. They said they had agreed clear criteria with Deloitte, against which they measured their performance and submitted a copy of those criteria.
They said, the criteria identified ‘last bank in town’ branches based on there being no alternative clearing banks or financial services institutions that offered current account facilities, excluding Post Office, in a radius of 1.5 miles. They then filtered those results to exclude those branches that were in locations designated as suburbs by CACI. They said, under those criteria, Farsley was defined as a suburb of Pudsey, where there was a NatWest branch. They believed that, as far as the complaint related to the Farsley branch, they were satisfied that they had met the criteria and that the claim in the ad was not misleading.
RBS said they recognised, however, that despite the strict criteria they set, customers would have their own interpretation of what constituted a town and their own view of what they believed to be an acceptable distance for the last bank in town to be from their own town centre. They said they would continue to develop their communications to ensure that their decision-making criteria were clear to customers.
Clearcast said that RBS had confirmed at script stage that the claim ''... continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town" was correct.
2. RBS said they did not believe that the ad implied that they would maintain their opening hours. They said the ad stated that "we will open our busiest branches for longer" which related to the fact that they opened 160 of their busiest branches earlier in the morning and/or later in the evening. They said the ad clearly stated that the claim related to their busiest branches and not their entire branch network.
RBS said that they had closed the RBS branch in Bettyhill, Thurso which had been the last bank in that town, but had replaced it with a service from their mobile bank which visited for the same hours as the branch had opened. They said the RBS branch had only, in effect, been some desks set up in a community centre in the village and that staff had arrived in the mobile bank and then gone to sit at the desks for two hours every Friday. They said, consequently, since the substitution of the mobile bank, customers could still do everything that they could before and the mobile bank visited for exactly the same hours in the week that the branch used to be open which was for two hours every Friday, was staffed by the same people as used to staff the branch and the services were exactly the same.
Clearcast said RBS had always referred to extending the opening hours of their busiest branches and that 'busiest' would exclude the branches highlighted by the complainant.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The ASA noted that ad (a) stated that Natwest would "continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town". Although we noted RBS's arguments about the definition in their Charter about what constituted a last bank and the CACI guidance on suburbs, we considered that that claim in the ad would be interpreted by viewers to mean that Natwest would not close a branch where it was the last one in its immediate locality.
We understood, however, from the response provided by RBS, that in the town of Farsley in Yorkshire they had closed a Natwest branch when there were no other banks remaining there.
Because ad (a) stated that Natwest would continue to provide banking services if it was the last in town and because we understood that there was a town in which they had not done so, we concluded that the claim was misleading.
On this point ad (a) breached BCAP Code rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.9 (Substantiation).
2. Upheld
We noted that ad (b) did not contain an explicit claim that RBS would retain opening hours across their branches and nor did we consider an implied claim was made. Although we noted that it stated "we've opened our busiest branches for longer" we considered that that claim related to extending opening hours at busy branches, rather than retaining opening hours at more remote or less busy ones.
We understood, however, that in the town of Bettyhill, RBS had closed a bank which was the last in town and replaced it with a stop on their mobile bank route. We noted that the claim "continue to provide banking services wherever we're the last bank in town" was spoken by an RBS employee walking through a remote location and then standing outside a branch. We considered that the claim and especially the setting and the reference to the "last bank" in the ad would be interpreted by viewers as a claim that RBS would not close a branch in circumstances when it was the last bank in town.
Although they provided the same services, we considered that the distinction between a branch and mobile bank was important. We understood that, although RBS operated an internal policy not to close or vary the service provided by their mobile banks without giving four weeks’ notice, the opening hours of actual branches was covered by banking regulations which required banks not to close or significantly change their opening hours without giving a longer notice period of 12 weeks.
Although we understood that, in Bettyhill, RBS had replaced a bank with a mobile bank, because we considered that the ad implied that they would retain bricks-and-mortar branches when, in Bettyhill, they had not done so, we concluded that claim, as it featured in ad (b), was misleading.
On this point ad (b) breached BCAP Code rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.9 (Substantiation).
Action
The ads must not be shown again in their current form.
