Royal Bank of Scotland BCG Case Study
Key Learning Outcomes
By the end of the case, students should be able to:
- Understand what the BCG (Growth-share) matrix is.
- Analyse the various strategic business units in RBS's portfolio and assess which ones are the stars and cash cows generating the most value, or the question marks, and dogs that may need further investment or divesting to achieve a balance of the portfolio.
- Apply strategy business models and frameworks such as the BCG matrix 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 this business case study analysis, we analyse the various strategic business units in RBS's portfolio and assess which ones are the stars and cash cows generating the most value, or the question marks, and dogs that may need further investment or divesting to achieve a balance of the portfolio.