ROYAL Bank of Scotland has committed to significantly increase the number of small business it helps to scale up after taking control of an incubator it jointly ran with Entrepreneurial Spark.
Since 2014 the incubator has supported 4,000 businesses across four UK hubs, but RBS is planning to bring 5,000 entrepreneurs through the scheme in 2018 alone.
These will be divided between the Entrepreneur Accelerator’s 12 hubs across the country, with specific fintech incubators being established in Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol and London.
Darren Pirie, head of entrepreneur development at RBS, said that while the accelerator programme would last for between six to 18 months, the bank is also putting in place a digital-led pre-acceleration programme for businesses at an earlier stage of development.
“We want to try to extend the reach of the accelerator to a wider audience and this allows us to go into the regions,” he said.
The news comes after RBS last week suffered the embarrassment of a report into how it treated customers of its controversial Global Restructuring Group finally being published.
The Financial Conduct Authority-commissioned report revealed that the unit, which was supposed to help small businesses in financial distress, had in fact mistreated many.
While RBS head of entrepreneurship Gordon Merrylees stressed that those going through the Entrepreneur Accelerator do not have to be customers of RBS, he added that the bank had established an entrepreneurial development academy to ensure staff are able to understand the thought processes its entrepreneur customers might have.
He said the academy, which 8,500 employees are expected to sign up to, “provides real confidence to people”.
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