In July 2022 we announced a package of support for customers, colleagues and communities to help with the rising cost of living. Following consultation with our personal and business customers, charities and strategic partners, we’ve announced a further package of support measures to help with the rising cost of living and inflation.
Here’s what you need to know about our new support measures:
1. Breathing space for those in financial difficulty - for personal customers, we're committed to supporting those in financial difficulty with interventions designed to create breathing space and alleviate pressure. From early February this year, where customers have missed several payments on an unsecured debt such as a loan or overdraft, we will extend the time for them to repay their debt from 18 to 24 months, giving them more time and flexibility.
2. Cashback on fuel and EV charging - With 1 in 3 business customers telling us that reduced banking fees would help them deal with ongoing pressures [1], we're launching fuel and EV charging cashback on its Business Credit Cards to help offset the cost of doing business. This will pay between 1% and 3% cashback on credit card spend in these categories every month to businesses, from 14 February.
3. Hardship funding for charities and partners - We're also providing a further £5.7m of hardship funding to charities and partners, including £1m to the Trussell Trust to further support the Help through Hardship scheme; over £1.6m to the debt advice sector; and £900k for Responsible Finance to support provision of accessible credit to people and businesses. We've committed further funding to our Regional Boards to be disbursed locally to smaller charities and organisations. This latest round of support builds on the £4m of support announced last year.
This new funding includes a new, £1million partnership with Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). FSB will provide NatWest Group business customers with access to independent support and education to help with the cost of living crisis via webinars, and 1-2-1 support over telephone and webchat. The support available will cover areas such as readying your business for funding and managing late payments.
4. Supporting our colleagues - to support our colleagues through the cost of living challenges, we’re making a one-off cash payment of £1,000 to 59,000 colleagues in January, and we’ve committed to a minimum pay rise of £2,000 from April this year for the majority of colleagues. This builds on an initial pay rise of 4% that was given to 22,000 colleagues in 2022.
Alison Rose DBE, Chief Executive, NatWest Group said:
“We are committed to listening to our customers and partners to understand where they face the most significant challenges, in turn delivering tailored support that provides help where it is needed most. Over the past year, including today’s new funding, we’ve provided around £40m of cost-of-living support to our personal customers and community partners.
“Whilst we are not yet seeing significant increases in defaults or people in arrears, this new package of funding and measures is designed to provide on the ground support to communities, breathing space for customers in difficulty and cashback to businesses to offset continued high energy and fuel costs.
“We know that everyone’s situation is unique, and I encourage customers who are facing difficulty to get in touch with us at the first available opportunity, where one of our highly trained colleagues will be ready to discuss all the options available to help them through this challenging period.”
[1] Natwest Group Cost of Living Spotlight Research, November 2022
