Alison Rose, chief executive of RBS commercial and private banking, shares her success story.
What do you do?
The way I look at it, as the chief executive of RBS’s commercial and private banking division, I have the best job in the bank. I look after all our business customers, so that includes companies with turnover from £2 million to the top of the FTSE 100, in the UK and western Europe, as well as private customers for the bank.
I’m normally in the office from around 7am and my day is typically a mixture.
I often sit down with my team first thing, will have board meetings during the day and meet two or three customers if I am in the London office.
Every couple of weeks, I will be in one of our local offices around the country, meeting customers and staff.
I will also have some credit committees to go to, where we look at approvals for transactions, as well as innovation ideas.
What do you enjoy about it?
It’s great spending time with people who are starting up and running their own businesses. That is by far the best part of my job.
I also have a great team I genuinely enjoy spending time with, whether it is fixing stuff or trying to solve problems for them or for customers. Those are the things that get you out of bed in the morning and make it fun.
Biggest break?
I come from a military family so I grew up all over the world before I settled back in England when I was 15. I then went off to study history at Durham University, and after that joined NatWest on a graduate scheme.
I worked my way up and have been in banking at Royal Bank of Scotland for over 20 years now.
There have been various points in my career where I have had different opportunities including, about eight years ago, looking after Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
I helped structure that business for the future, which was really interesting. In banking, you can have a hundred different careers in one bank.
For my current role, my break was about three years ago when Ross McEwan became chief executive. I worked with him in the strategic review of the bank and then I was offered the opportunity to run the business I head today.
Biggest setback?
There are always challenges along the way. But the biggest setback was really, as I guess most bankers would say, in 2008.
The financial crisis was a pretty traumatic period to go through for the industry. There was the emotional experience of watching everything that we had been working on change, and the terrible situation that RBS found itself in. That was a pretty emotional and difficult experience.
I learned an enormous amount from that. It certainly committed me to wanting to be part of the team that could fix and rebuild RBS.
How do you juggle your work-life balance?
It is a case of constantly juggling. I live in Highgate, north London, I’m married and have a 13-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son. I have a lot of support including a very supportive husband, a fantastic mum, who helps out, and a nanny. So I think the best advice is to have lots of back-up and support.
For me, it has always been about what the non-negotiable things are and what you are not prepared to compromise on. When I was travelling internationally much more, the golden rule was that I was never away from home at the weekend.
I would also attend school sports day and parents’ evenings. Sometimes it works brilliantly but others it is a complete disaster.
Any tips?
Find something you really enjoy doing. Really be yourself because you are in your role through being good at what you do.
So learn, invest in yourself, invest in your skills, seek advice and support, but remember to be yourself.
*** Based on Standard UK
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