Banking Competition Remedies (BCR), the independent body established to implement the £775 million Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) State Aid Alternative Remedies Package, has announced the resignation of Godfrey Cromwell as executive chair.

Cromwell will leave at the end of September, to be replaced in August with current BCR non-executive director Richard Anderson as non-executive chair.

He has led BCR since its set-up in April 2018 and decided to stand down to coincide with the completion of most of the major decisions at BCR.

Under his leadership, the Incentivised Switching Scheme has doubled the small business switching rate through CASS, while the Capability and Innovation Fund has allocated £425 million to a wide range of organisations, which are now using these funds to support the development of wider capabilities and competition in the business banking market.

Cromwell commented: “Every deadline has been met, within budget, and we have recruited two excellent non executive directors who add value to the board.

"All this in the teeth of once-per-generation economic, social and political challenges from Brexit and Covid-19 - I am leaving BCR in very capable hands and wish them continued success.”

Anderson added: “these are difficult times for the SME banking market and for FinTechs in general, so we know how important our role is in distributing Pool E and also in holding awardees from all Pools to account against their public commitments.”

A further funding round, Pool E was created to redeploy some £100 million of this sum after two awardees, Metro Bank and Nationwide, each returned £50 million to BCR after their own internal strategic reviews indicated a change in business direction.

Application round one of Pool E is due to report during the week commencing 17 August and round two is due to report during the week commencing 21 September.

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