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Innovation and digitalisation

Through our planned investment of £3.5 billion from 2023 to 2025, where more than 70% of the spend is targeted at data and technology, we’re digitalising our services to make it easier for our customers to bank at a time and place convenient to them.

Key Stats

With a particular focus on digitalisation, machine learning and artificial intelligence we've been using AI very successfully for several years, delivering customer benefits and simplifying processes.

AI is embedded in our chatbot Cora. In 2023, Cora handled

10.8m (*)

retail banking customer conversations, 49% of which needed no human intervention.

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AI assists financial crime and fraud detection with

                                                            

6,000

colleagues using AI to identify key trends to educate and protect our customers, especially those most vulnerable to falling victim to crime.

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Currently, the bank utilises AI in

                                                     

15%

of its analytical models. In terms of the future we’re well placed to leverage AI following investment in cloud data platforms, Machine Learning capabilities and data specialist resources.

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(*) Within the scope of EY assurance. Refer to our External assurance webpage.

Embedding our services in our customers’ digital lives

Our mobile app enables our customers to bank whenever, wherever, with 9.8 million(*) of our customers mobile users. We have 10.9 million(*)(1) digitally active retail and business banking customers and 3.5 million(*) customers using the online banking platform. 67%(*) of our active current customers exclusively bank with us using digital channels, through mobile and online.

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1) A digitally-active customer is someone who has accessed either their online banking platform or mobile banking app.
(*) Within the scope of EY assurance. Refer to our External assurance webpage.

Enhancements to our mobile app

Our mobile app means NatWest, RBS and Ulster Bank NI customers can bank whenever and wherever they need to. In 2023, we continued to evolve our app to provide even more ways to make it easier for customers to manage their money. Examples include: 

For more information on how we have enhanced our mortgage journeys and the launch of our Home Energy Hub, please see page 30 of our 2023 ESG Disclosures Report. 

Commercial & Institutional customers

We have continued to digitalise our services to support our Commercial & Institutional customers:

  • Relationship managers can now access key customer information via a tablet while out in the field with customers.
  • Mandates are now available via mobile and payment queries can be initiated via Bankline.
  • Automated signature verification has resulted in an increase in digital service utilisation.
  • Tyl by NatWest was one of only two launch partners for Tap to Pay on iPhone in the UK. Alongside Tap to Pay on Android, which was also released in 2023, the new capability empowers our customers to securely accept payments with only their mobile phone and removes the need for additional hardware or payment terminals.

Open banking and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

From January 2019 to 31 December 2023, over 5 million customers have used our APIs to access their account information and 2.9 million customers have used our APIs to make a payment – initiating transactions worth over £18.2 billion.

NatWest Group has gone beyond the regulatory requirement for banks to provide Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) and can now offer this alternative payment method to businesses and consumers.

As a result, we have been recognised for this industry-first payment method by winning Best Initiative in Open Banking at the 2023 Card and Payment Awards and were shortlisted for Best Bank & PayTech Partnership at the 2023 PayTech Awards. NatWest Group is the leading UK bank in the 2023 Open Finance Global Rankings.

We won the Financial Services Innovation award at the Scottish Fintech Awards, with our Bank of APIs recognised for supporting the UK’s fintech ecosystem.

Digital service stability remains high

In 2023, we had consistently high performance and stability of our most critical systems, which have been available 99.99% of the time. 2023 saw two Criticality 1 incidents, compared with two for 2022 (1, 2). These numbers include all events which had an impact on our operations, not just system issues. 

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(1) By way of illustration, a Criticality 1 incident could be a loss of key IT systems resulting in an impact to more than 15% of the bank’s customers or an incident that leads to a financial loss of over £10 million.

(2) Availability of our key systems is currently calculated against our Important Business Services – those defined as the most critical.

For more information on how we are digitalising our business, please see our 2023 ESG Disclosures Report.

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Learn more about how we’re using AI and Data to serve our customers. 

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