Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS) chief executive has recently told the BBC that the bank is “preparing for the worst” in relation to the Brexit result, as the bank may have to decline new business customers if there is a no Brexit deal.

RBS has recently sent 150 staff to Amsterdam to set up a new entity to act for its European customers in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

“We’re having to put a number of our senior team and our systems and processes to move our European customers across into that entity for our markets business and our corporates,” he said.

McEwan added that the bank had still not received its licenses for the operation stating that, if they do not get the licenses in time, it could “create major problems” for its customers and the bank.

Failure to receive the appropriate licenses by the time the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 could potentially leave the bank unable to provide services to some of its European customers. British banks currently rely on the passporting service to serve EU clients, but this is expected to fail should the UK leave the union without a deal.

McEwan said: “In the next couple of months, we’re going to have to make some decisions, to make sure we’ve got the licenses, and if we don’t, we’re going to have to think about which European customers we may not be able to bank.”

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