Royal Bank of Scotland gives opportunity to 16 young people

The Standard's Ladder for London campaign received another huge boost today when one of Britain’s biggest high street banks said it would take on 16 unemployed young people as apprentices.

Royal Bank of Scotland — owner of the NatWest bank network — will employ the young Londoners in its corporate banking division for six months and hopes that as many as possible will stay on in permanent roles.

Yesterday, City investment bank Goldman Sachs became the first employer to sign up to the initiative.

The RBS apprentices, all in their teens and early twenties, will be based in the bank’s main headquarters in Bishopsgate in the heart of the City and other locations around London.

Chris Sullivan, chief executive of corporate banking, said the apprentices would be given well-rewarded, hands-on “productive” roles in key areas such as client relationship management, risk analysis and IT.

He said: “This is not going to be about just going to a different school and I don’t want them feeling they are some kind of cheap labour. They will be a productive part of the team.”

However, they will get mentors as well to help them adapt to their new working life.

Interviews for the first “two or three” apprenticeships will take place within days with others joining the bank over the coming weeks and months.

Mr Sullivan, who left school at 18 and has been with the bank for 38 years, said he was “living proof” that there should be no limits to their ambitions if things go well.

Speaking to potential apprentices at the Tower Hamlets offices of our campaign partner City Gateway, he said: “There are no limits, the only limits are you — what you can do and what you can contribute.”

He added: “I see no evidence that graduates do better than the people we take on from sixth form.”

Mr Sullivan said RBS, which employs 150,000 people worldwide, recognised that the reputation of banks had deteriorated hugely over recent years and said: “We need to rebuild trust so that banks are seen again as socially useful organisations.”

But he said the bank’s involvement was not merely a “charitable” one.

He said: “The bank is part of society. We’re doing this not just because it’s a good thing to do but because if society improves overall we make more money out of it. We’re not ashamed of that, we’re a commercial organisation.”

Mr Sullivan said the bank’s chief executive Stephen Hester had been “absolutely supportive” about the bank’s involvement in the scheme.

The bank has offered six-month rather than 12-month apprenticeships so that if either side felt the placement was not working it would not drag on too long. However, successful apprentices will be offered extensions and eventually permanent jobs.

Source: 27^th September 2012, London Evening Standard, Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor

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