The History of The Royal Bank of Scotland

The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is one of Europe’s leading financial services providers and one of the oldest banks in the UK. Its branch network spans the nation and it boasts a pedigree of great variety and distinction. Its history is very much the history of banking in the British Isles over the past four centuries. The Royal Bank itself was established in 1727, but the Group can trace its roots back to the sixteenth century through the amalgamation of over 200 private and joint stock banks which are its past and present constituents.

The Royal Bank of Scotland was founded by Royal Charter in Edinburgh in 1727. It opened its first branch in Glasgow in 1783 and developed a large network of offices throughout Scotland during the nineteenth century. In 1874 it opened a branch office in London and from the 1920s developed, by acquisition, a major presence in England. Banks which joined the group during these years included Drummonds (established c.1712), Williams Deacon’s Bank (established 1836), Glyn, Mills & Co (established 1753) and Child & Co (established c.1580s) with business links in London, north west England and overseas. By 1970, following the Royal Bank’s merger with the Edinburgh-based National Commercial Bank of Scotland, comprising the former National Bank of Scotland (established 1825) and Commercial Bank of Scotland (established 1810), it enjoyed over forty per cent of Scotland’s banking business and, under the Williams & Glyn’s Bank banner, also boasted a large and growing presence in England and Wales.

In 1985 Williams & Glyn’s merged fully with the Group’s Scottish clearing bank which thereafter traded together throughout Britain as a single entity, The Royal Bank of Scotland. During the 1980s the Group diversified, setting up an innovative car insurance company, Direct Line, in 1985 and acquiring Citizens Financial Group (established 1828) of Rhode Island in the USA in 1988. Both were to prove highly successful ventures. During the early 1990s the Royal Bank refocused on its core business of retail banking, acquiring the private bank of Adam & Company (established 1983) in 1992.

The Royal Bank of Scotland launched Direct Banking in 1994, which quickly became Britain’s fastest growing twenty-four telephone banking operation, and in 1997 announced the UK’s first fully-fledged on-line banking service over the Internet. In the same year it launched joint financial services ventures with both Tesco and Virgin Direct.

Most recently, in March 2000, the Royal Bank acquired National Westminster Bank plc to become the third largest bank in the UK. National Westminster Bank was formed in 1968, when National Provincial Bank (established 1833), along with its subsidiary District Bank (established 1829) , and Westminster Bank (created 1909), agreed to merge. This new bank began trading in 1970, but can also trace its history back down the centuries through its own lineage of prestigious constituent banks. These include early London goldsmiths’ banks, such as Hankeys & Co (established 1685) and Coutts & Co (established 1692); major Victorian metropolitan banks such as Union of London & Smith’s Bank (established 1839) and London & Westminster Bank (established 1822); and a huge number of provincial banks large and small such as Stuckey’s Banking Co (established 1826) in the south west, County Bank (established 1862) in the north west, Sheffield Banking Co (established 1831) and Beckett & Co (established 1774) in the north east, Crawshay, Bailey & Co (established 1837) in Wales and Ulster Bank (established 1836) in Northern Ireland.

Today The Royal Bank of Scotland Group’s importance in the UK banking sector is firmly reflected in its long and distinctive history.

For more detailed information on the history of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group's constituent banks please enter The Memory Bank