Our Divisions
Non-Core Businesses
This Division manages the sale or run down of Non-Core assets and businesses. The Division contains a range of businesses and asset portfolios primarily from GBM, linked to proprietary trading, higher risk profile asset portfolios including excess risk concentrations, and other illiquid portfolios. It also includes a number of portfolios and businesses, including regional markets businesses that the Group has concluded are no longer strategic.
Our Non-Core Division is central to the strategy that will return RBS to self-sufficiency.
On the one hand, it is managing assets that are no longer core to our strategy and the continuing operations of RBS, and which we plan to sell or to run down. On the other, partly because Non-Core will reduce the asset side of our balance sheet, it will improve our funding position and make RBS a safer bank. Non-Core Division was created to facilitate the re-shaping of RBS on its journey to self-sufficiency and is responsible for one of the largest bank restructurings being undertaken globally and one of the largest in history.
The Asset Protection Scheme (APS) is also vital to our plans. It is a credit protection scheme. It gives us protection, similar to an insurance policy, against future losses in the event that the economy enters a further, severe and prolonged downturn.
We manage Non-Core & APS together, under the leadership of Nathan Bostock and Rory Cullinan, who joined us during the year. We have structured Non-Core Division & APS into three key business areas.
• Portfolio & Banking is responsible for the wholesale banking assets transferred from GBM and accounts for the largest percentage of the assets in Non-Core.
• International Businesses & Portfolios manages assets and includes the retail and commercial businesses identified as non-core, the countries we are exiting to reduce our geographic footprint, and portfolios primarily transferred from our UK Corporate Banking Division, Ulster Bank and Citizens. It is the largest employer in the division with almost 13,000 employees globally.
• Non-Core Markets includes trading assets from GBM, principally our exotic credit derivatives, monoline and asset-backed securities positions and is responsible for the most volatile assets placed in Non-Core Division. In addition, we have a small number of standalone businesses, such as Aviation Capital.