page_title: Royal Bank of Scotland
section_title: Foundation
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Bank of Scotland / History / Foundation
caption_attribution_description: Registered Head Office of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC. St Andrew Square, Edinburgh
context_page_description: The Royal Bank of Scotland is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest and Ulster Bank. The Royal Bank of Scotland has around 700 branches, mainly in Scotland, though there are branches in many larger towns and cities throughout England and Wales. The bank is completely separate from the fellow Edinburgh-based bank, the Bank of Scotland, which pre-dates the Royal Bank by 32 years. The Royal Bank of Scotland was established in 1724 to provide a bank with strong Hanoverian and Whig ties.
  Following ring-fencing of the Group's core domestic business, the bank became a direct subsidiary of NatWest Holdings in 2019. NatWest Markets comprises the Group's investment banking arm. To give it legal form, the former RBS entity was renamed NatWest Markets in 2018; at the same time Adam and Company was renamed The Royal Bank of Scotland, with Adam and Company continuing as an RBS private banking brand in Scotland, along the same lines as the Messrs. Drummond and Child & Co. businesses in England.
context_section_description: The bank traces its origin to the Society of the Subscribed Equivalent Debt, which was set up by investors in the failed Company of Scotland to protect the compensation they received as part of the arrangements of the 1707 Acts of Union.  The "Equivalent Society" became the "Equivalent Company" in 1724, and the new company wished to move into banking.  The British government received the request favourably as the "Old Bank", the Bank of Scotland, was suspected of having Jacobite sympathies.  Accordingly, the "New Bank" was chartered in 1727 as the Royal Bank of Scotland, with Archibald Campbell, Lord Ilay, appointed its first governor.
  On 31 May 1728, the Royal Bank of Scotland invented the overdraft, which was later considered an innovation in modern banking. It allowed William Hogg, a merchant in the High Street of Edinburgh, access to £1,000 (£136,244 in today's value) credit.
caption: Dundas House, designed by Sir William Chambers, built in 1774 for Sir Lawrence Dundas and acquired by the bank in 1821.[4]
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