EXPOSED: RBS intentionally destroyed small businesses for profit.

Leaked emails show RBS forced struggling customers into eye-watering loans, and asset stripped their businesses when they failed for a quick buck. Bankers were even rewarded with big bonuses for finding fragile people to exploit. 

RBS willingly destroyed livelihoods in a dash for cash to save itself from the financial crisis it helped case. It lined its pockets by crushing lives, marriages and people’s futures. 

Banks like RBS are supposed to support local communities and small businesses. If we can break RBS up, and turn it into a people’s bank -- a network of small, community friendly local banks -- we can start fixing our broken banking system.

It may sound radical, but it’s perfectly possible. RBS is 73% owned by the taxpayer, and the government admit it can’t sell it anytime soon. With a new PM desperate to show she backs ordinary people, we can persuade her to take back control of RBS and use our stake in it for the public good.

Banking scandals at RBS can’t go on. Let’s tell the new PM Theresa May to turn RBS into a people’s bank.

RBS earmarked 16,000 business for raiding, hiking their loans up 500% and eagerly waiting for them to fail so it could hand out big fines and snap up their assets for rock bottom prices. RBS mined these unsuspecting, vulnerable business, extracting profits while its own customers watched their lives fall apart. Many have suffered mental and physical health problems because of RBS. 

This is the most corrupt and odious banking scandal in years. RBS employed these dirty tactics even after the crisis, when it was owned by the taxpayer. It was supposed to have learnt lessons, and work for the good of the British people. We were conned.

Nothing RBS or the government has done so far has changed the bank’s greedy, poisonous culture. But if RBS was broken up, and run as a network of genuinely local banks it would be supporting small businesses in the community. 

SumOfUs has fought to rein in the power of corporate banks and keep them accountable. 120,000 UK SumOfUs members signed on to stop George Osborne from selling off RBS at a loss to the taxpayer. Now let’s take the next step. Turning RBS into a people’s bank is a one-time opportunity to fix our broken banking system, and we can't let this government throw it away.

Theresa May: sort RBS out once and for all, break it up into a network of local banks that support people, not exploit them.