RBS was been fined £5.6m for failing to ensure that  customers and  transactions were not involved in terrorism in August 2010. It was subsequently penalised £1.2m in November 2011 after it placed below-market prices in an auction among 13 credit default swap dealers.

The Financial Services Authority more recently fined Royal Bank of Scotland and its parent bank NatWest £2.8m for multiple failings in the way the banks have handled customers' complaints, responding inadequately to more than half the complaints reviewed by the regulator. 

 An "unacceptably high" risk was that customers may not have been treated fairly due to a number of failings in the banks' approaches to routine complaint handling and  the failure  to provide customers with their Financial Ombudsman Service referral rights within the appropriate time period.