RBS 2003 Annual Report Download - page 27

Retail Direct
Annual Report and Accounts 2003
25
Retail Direct is responsible for the
Group’s cards and non-branch
based retail businesses. We
continued to expand by organic
growth and acquisition. During 2003
the total number of customer
accounts grew by 12% or 1.7 million.
Our income showed strong growth,
up 15% to £1,835 million.
 Average lending rose by 15% to £20.3 billion
of which average mortgage lending was up 20% at
£7.6 billion. Average customer deposits were up
5% to £4.4 billion.
Cards
 Our cards business remains the second
largest issuer in the UK and continued to grow
customer numbers and balances in 2003.
 The acquisition of the credit card and
personal loans portfolios of Santander Direkt Bank
in Germany added over 460,000 customer
accounts and balances of around 350 million,
bringing our total number of customer accounts in
Continental Europe to over 2 million.
 We are at the forefront of tackling fraud
through the implementation of “Chip and PIN”
technology giving our customers the security they
expect and deserve when using their credit card.
Despite the size of our operations, we have the
lowest experience of fraud in the UK, and we
intend to improve on this by issuing new, more
secure cards to all our customers.
 In December we launched our new direct
brand 'MINT'. The brand stands out from its
competitors by offering customers an exceptional
combination of benefits.
 The MC2card, the new credit card with a
curved edge, was launched in December. This
innovative new style marked the first change to
credit card shape in Europe since credit cards
were first introduced 37 years ago.
 Our business customers also benefited from
innovation with the launch of a new product which
combines the features of a corporate credit card and
a purchasing card. It enables businesses to track
expenditure by card holders on key elements of
purchasing such as travel.
 2003 was another record year for Streamline,
our merchant acquiring business, which handled
over 2 billion transactions during the year, retaining
its position as No.1 in the UK market.
 WorldPay, our internet merchant acquirer,
occupies a significant position in the SME internet
segment of the UK market.
Tesco Personal Finance
 Tesco Personal Finance is the UK’s most
successful supermarket bank. It now has over 4
million customer accounts, and over 1 million of
these are motor insurance policies.
 In Tesco Personal Finance average personal
loans rose by 25% and average customer deposits
by 16%.
 More than 100 million transactions were
carried out during 2003 from over 1,000 Tesco
Personal Finance ATMs.