About NatWest Group

The NatWest Group (formerly RBS) provides a wide range of products and services to personal, commercial and large corporate and institutional customers through its two principal subsidiaries, The Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest, and a number of other well-known brands, including, Ulster Bank, Coutts, and Lombard.

In February 2020, Alison Rose, CEO of the NatWest Group, set out a new purpose for the bank:

“Today marks the start of a new era for our bank as we announce our new purpose – to champion potential, helping people, families and businesses to thrive. The way people live their lives has changed. And their expectations of companies are changing too; looking for us to deliver not only financial performance but a positive contribution to society; benefitting customers and communities as well as shareholders. The future of this bank depends on us successfully delivering on both.”

As part of its purpose announcement, NatWest has set out the following commitments:

• To help create 50k incremental new businesses across the UK by 2023, and support over half a million people to consider entrepreneurship as a career option.
  
  Much of this support will be focussed on the people and communities who have traditionally faced the highest barriers to entry;

The Women in Business Program

NatWest believes that gender diversity enables better understanding of and responsiveness to a diverse client base. In the UK, the Women in Business programme supports women-led and -owned small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by recognizing that women often benefit from a different type of banking approach and relationship building. We currently have over 600 Women in Business Specialists across the UK who specialise in the needs of Women in Business.

In 2019, Alison Rose published a report commissioned by the UK Government: The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which sets out recommendations to improve female-led start-ups and scale-up rates and contribute £250bn of new value to the UK economy.

One year on, NatWest published an update on progress made, including the launch of £1bn of funding ringfenced for female entrepreneurs and Back Her Business a programme to help women validate their ideas and crowdfund to launch their business, including match-funding from NatWest.

NatWest Group has been placed in The Times Top 50 Where Women Want to Work list every year since the list’s inception and achieved gold status with Opportunity Now – a gender campaign charity that aims to accelerate change for women in the workplace.

To learn more about NatWest’s Women’s Market achievements, read our Case Study on the Women in Business program.

To learn more about RBS and NatWest’s Women’s Market achievements, read our Case Study on the Women in Business program.