RBS Porters Five Forces Case study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Analyse the UK banking industry and how the five forces have affected the Royal Bank of Scotland, and rivals and the impact on industry structure, attractiveness, and profitability.
- Understand how the Royal Bank of Scotland has managed to defend against intense competition from Lloyds, Barclays, RBS and new fintechs and the strategies it uses to create 'blue oceans' that are defensible, helping it capture and maintain competitive advantage.
- To apply strategy business models and frameworks such as Porters five forces to real company cases.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Royal Bank of Scotland is a UK based banking and financial services provider with operations in UK and Ireland where it operates as Ulster Bank. In England, it operates as the NatWest brand while in Scotland, it is still RBS where it has been serving Scottish customers since 1727. RBS has operations in a diverse set of consumer and wholesale businesses including retail, credit cards and mortgages (operating as RBS, NatWest & Ulster), wealth management (operating as Coutts), commercial and corporate lending (operating as Lombard, Adam & Co. etc).
It is part of the UK "Big Four" banks, referring to the highly oligopolistic nature of the biggest four banks which are; Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, RBS and HSBC bank. These control a combined market share of 77.17% for current accounts in the UK’s banking industry, or seven in 10 current accounts in the UK are registered to one of the Big Four.
In the following section, the report analyses the UK banking industry and how the five forces have affected the Royal Bank of Scotland, and rivals and the impact on industry structure, attractiveness, and profitability. The report will examine how the Royal Bank of Scotland has managed to defend against intense competition from Lloyds, Barclays, RBS and new fintechs and the strategies it uses to create 'blue oceans' that are defensible, helping it capture and maintain competitive advantage.