While this sounds good in theory - and I agree absolutely about business process, culture and the rest of it - I think it’s really hard to keep a key part of the legacy bank. If RBS are committed to this, they need to fund it, keeps hands off and hope (rather counterintuitively) that their new challenger eats their legacy business. It won’t be able to do this if they are constrained and dependent on the parent for anything (be it tech or whatever).
On the article, though, this section caught my eye:
we’re focussed on using automation and technology to deliver a more efficient banking experience
If by automation they’re talking about something like Robotic Process Automation (Robotic process automation - Wikipedia) then they’ve lost before they’ve begun. (Personal view, obvs!)