Interview: Gordon Merrylees, MD of Entrepreneurship at RBS, NatWest & Ulster bank

Gordon is heading to Newcastle early the day after we spoke and is nursing a cold contracted from his son, Harris. He persevered to offer insights into his time at RBS, Natwest & Ulster Bank.

“I started in the bank 35 years ago. It sounds like forever, but it doesn’t feel like that. I started as a cashier in a little mining village and worked my way up.

I loved helping and dealing with customers. I moved into leadership and ever since I’ve been lucky to head up various teams. More recently I was fortunate enough to head up Business Banking where we work with pre-seed all the way to those with around £2 million turnover.”

An event that had a large effect on Gordon’s time at RBS was the bailout of 2008. Gordon was candid in his reflection on this time:

“We had a really tough time as a bank. I’d be working at the bank for nearly 25 years. Trying to manage the press every single day, not only from a customer point of view but also from a business community and wider stakeholder perspective, and most importantly managing our people.

It knocked the team for six. They no longer wanted to hold their heads high. It was a tough place to be. You couldn’t walk outside with your badge or tie without being challenged.

It was a real challenge to keep the dressing room together. Many customers lost faith in us, we had lost customer focus, but the strength of relationships we had with the business community and ecosystem was really evident.”

RBS continued to hold a very public image. This saw a series of tough events where RBS was the poster child for the disdain toward banks:

“I was at a dinner where RBS were the main sponsors. Bob Geldof was the guest speaker and he went in on us. On the back of this painful evening I wanted to understand what we could do to raise the confidence of people in the bank and get them out holding their heads’ high when talking to customers again.

Sir Tom Hunter, also a speaker that evening, spoke about the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. Scotland had risen to pass a number of the Scandinavian countries. I began to think about how could we role model that progress as a bank and have a genuine impact on people, while building our reputation.”

In April 2007, Sir Tom was reported as the first-ever-home-grown billionaire in Scotland. With a network unrivaled in Scotland, Sir Tom, without knowing it, set RBS on its way to rebuilding as a bank:

“Sir Tom mentioned an organisation called Entrepreneurial Spark. The next day, I made it my business to find out who they were.

I hit it off with the then CEO. He liked the fact that we were starting to treat RBS like a startup. He said we had 24 hours to come back with £75,000 enabling us to become main sponsors.

So I did something pretty entrepreneurial. I knew the business manager who worked with RBS’s CEO and I said to him here are the benefits to our customers, our people, our organisation — I want to do this. I told him I thought this could help rebuild our brand, reputation, advocacy and trust.

So I’d gone above my bosses, bosses, bosses, boss to get to the CEO, not something I recommend doing too often. I got the money and I subsequently apologised to those people I had gone above! But, they quickly realised this was a great purpose for the bank.”

I really believed in it. It took me 30 years to find the best job in the bank but I’ve got it now!

This started RBS’s journey with Entrepreneurial Spark, now the UK’s largest free business accelerator.

Gordon was tasked, after prompting from CEO Ross McEwan, and with full backing from recently appointed CEO Alison Rose, with rolling out the accelerator across the UK. Gordon has since brought the programme fully in-house to the bank:

“On Valentine’s Day, 2018 we welcomed all of their staff, in house. We now have a team of 62 people and, like any organisation, we’ve had our own growing pains as we’ve scaled our proposition.”

RBS now has 12 accelerators across the UK offering three distinct programs; Business Builder, Accelerator and Next Level Accelerator:

“It became the largest fully-funded business accelerator, in the UK.

We break it up into three pillars of support:

1. The environment — the hubs themselves. Fully-funded office space for up to 18 months. This environment creates a real community of like-minded entrepreneurs which is priceless.

2. The network — the connectivity, access to markets, access to an unrivalled customer base and supply chain connections that help scale these companies.

3. The coaching — startups get access to development managers who support the entrepreneurs at leveraging networks, the ecosystem, and access to markets. They also have dedicated 1 on 1 time with acceleration managers who are there to challenge the businesses to think differently, push themselves out of their comfort zones, hold them to account and develop them as entrepreneurial leaders.

The bank is continuing to innovate and provide new offerings for entrepreneurs:

“We’re currently working on a mentor matching platform allowings things such as a peer-peer search function and the creation of a virtual board of advisors for companies. It really looks to build on that connectivity we’ve focused on over the last few years”

The accelerator was recently endorsed by The Scale Up Institute:

“For us to be endorsed by the Institute 18 months into the program is just massive — a real feather in our cap”

With the success of the Accelerators, Gordon began to think of possible internal applications and how the bank could foster entrepreneurial thinking in its staff:

“What started off as us trying to build trust and advocacy for the bank has turned into so much more.

We recently launched our own Entrepreneurial Development Academy. We thought; how good would it be to teach our colleagues the tools and techniques we teach our entrepreneurs.

This would allow them to learn the pressures and challenges entrepreneurs face and to support them empathetically with better business to business conversations.

I was under pressure from day one to make it mandatory. I refused because I wanted people to be part of a movement, volunteer for the program as a unique personal development opportunity.

As of February this year we’ve had 21,822 colleagues join the program. It’s fostered a culture quite rare in big banks, where our staff can take acceptable risks, are innovative and apply an intrapreneurial mindset to every day work.

This feeds into what we’re doing at NatWest Ventures where we’re building our own version of those startups with companies such as Esme Loans.”

Esme Loans allows Start-ups to apply for loans of up to £250,000 through the use of artificial intelligence and application programming interfaces. In 2019 Esme’s total lending to UK SMEs exceeded £100m and is wholly-owned by NatWest.

“This entrepreneurial spirit has really begun to manifest itself in the culture you touch and feel at the bank”

The Accelerators have supported over 19,100 entrepreneurs to date, creating over 1,000 jobs and adding over £100m to the UK economy. 49% of the businesses supported have been female-led.

“We’re really chuffed about that. It’s hard to find stats like that anywhere and it’s happened totally naturally too.

90% of girls aged 9–10 agree they have the same career chances as boys but this drops to 54% by 16, and 35% by 21. So, there’s a real confidence deficit that we look to develop in our programs.

A lack of role models is a real challenge. 55% of 11–21 year old young women think they don’t have enough access to female role models. This is compounded by a lack of career advice throughout education. That’s where the bank’s Dream Bigger initiative for young women is looking to help.

“The program is about supporting young women, 16–18, through state schools.”

In their annual Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, RBS sets out its recommendations for improving female start-up and scale-up rates.

“The bank is looking to become a real purpose-led bank, and these initiatives feed into that. Deeply understanding what is important to customers, communities, families and their lives.

Toward the end of the interview, we wanted to understand what common traits Gordon had seen in successful entrepreneurs:

“ They’ve all got a tremendous ability to take something that they love doing, but that they’re also great at, and then they find that the world needs it and it could improve peoples’ lives. If you can commercialise that — bingo”

The personal traits that really impress me are being decisive, opportunistic, creative, adaptable, nimble and also persistent and resilient. They’ve got an ‘always on’ work ethic where they are incredibly passionate, and execute exceptionally well.”

“If you’re passionate, great at something and can turn this into a mission with purpose, then you’re really onto something”

“It’s the little things: embrace failure, begin within your means, fail fast cheaply and learn quickly, surround yourself with great advisors, and adopt a theme of continuous learning, pivoting execution.”