NatWest Group plc (NWG.L) — Company Research

Last Updated: 22 October 2026

NatWest Group plc is one of the UK's largest banking groups, operating through NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland, Coutts and, since July 2026, Evelyn Partners. It is the UK's largest bank for business and almost all of its income comes from the UK, so its earnings track UK interest rates, deposits, mortgages and business lending closely. Since the last version of this report (6 June 2026) the group has reported higher first-half profit, raised its 2026 guidance, completed the £2.7bn purchase of Evelyn Partners and come under pressure from reports of a higher bank tax in the 28 October Budget. Every figure below comes from the group's results announcements, RNS notifications and SEC filings. There are no analyst opinions, price targets or ratings anywhere in it.

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

1. Company Snapshot

Field	Value
Ticker / exchange	NWG.L — London Stock Exchange (NYSE ADS: NWG)
Sector	Banking — UK retail, commercial, institutional and private banking and wealth management
Revenue (FY2025)	£16,641m total income, up 13.2% (FY2024: £14,703m); £16,400m excluding notable items
Operating profit before tax (FY2025)	£7,708m
Attributable profit (FY2025)	£5,479m to ordinary shareholders
Basic EPS (FY2025)	68.0p (FY2024: 53.5p)
Dividend per share (FY2025)	32.5p ordinary (9.5p interim plus 23.0p final)
Return on tangible equity	19.2% in FY2025; 19.7% in H1 2026
CET1 capital ratio	14.0% at 31 December 2025; 13.2% at 30 June 2026 after the Evelyn Partners acquisition
Total assets (31 Dec 2025)	£714.6bn; customer deposits £443.0bn; net loans to customers £418.9bn
Employees	58,720 full-time equivalent at 31 December 2025 (average 59,132 during 2025)
CEO / Leadership	Paul Thwaite, Group Chief Executive; Katie Murray, Group Chief Financial Officer; Rick Haythornthwaite, Chair
Headquarters	250 Bishopsgate, London; registered office in Edinburgh
Ownership	Fully privately owned since 30 May 2025, when HM Treasury sold its last shares

2. The Bull and Bear Case

Bull Case

• Returns above target: H1 2026 return on tangible equity was 19.7%, with Q2 at 21.0%, and management raised its 2026 guidance to above 19% from above 17% at the start of the year.
• Income still growing: FY2025 total income rose 13.2% to £16,641m and 2026 income excluding notable items is now guided at about £17.9bn, helped by structural hedge income expected to rise by about £1.5bn in 2026.
• Wealth franchise scaled up: the £2.7bn Evelyn Partners acquisition completed on 30 June 2026, adding Bestinvest and a large financial-planning team, with about £100m a year of targeted cost savings.
• Large capital return: the FY2025 dividend rose 51% to 32.5p, the payout policy is about 50% of attributable profit, and a buyback of up to £750m is running to January 2027.

Bear Case

• Bank tax threat: reports on 16 October 2026 said the Chancellor is considering raising the bank corporation tax surcharge from 3% to 8% in the 28 October Budget, a change reported to raise about £2bn a year from the sector.
• Less capital headroom: CET1 fell to 13.2% after Evelyn, close to the roughly 13% target, and Basel 3.1 is expected to add about £10bn of risk-weighted assets on 1 January 2027.
• Rate sensitivity: net interest income was 77% of FY2025 income, so cuts to Bank Rate and deposit pricing pressure feed directly into earnings.
• Impairments drifting up: the loan impairment rate rose from 9 basis points in FY2024 to 16 basis points in FY2025 and 19 basis points in H1 2026, against guidance of below 25 basis points.

3. Revenue Segments

NatWest reports three customer businesses plus central items. The figures below are total income for FY2025 from the 2025 annual results announcement.

Segment	% of revenue	What it is
Commercial & Institutional (£8,809m)	52.9%	Lending, deposits, payments and markets for 1.5m UK businesses from start-ups to large corporates and financial institutions; the UK's largest business bank.
Retail Banking (£6,495m)	39.0%	Mortgages, current accounts, savings, cards and personal loans for UK consumers under the NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank brands, including the Sainsbury's Bank book acquired in May 2025.
Private Banking & Wealth Management (£1,131m)	6.8%	Coutts, NatWest private banking and investment management; enlarged by Evelyn Partners from 30 June 2026. Assets under management and administration were £58.5bn at the end of 2025, before Evelyn.
Central items & other (£206m)	1.2%	Treasury and group-level items.

Group total income in H1 2026 was £8,862m. Compare UK bank names on the ChartsView Live Charts page.

4. Business Model and Moat

How it makes money. NatWest is a deposit-funded lender. In FY2025 net interest income was £12,829m, 77% of total income, and non-interest income (fees, commissions, trading and other) was £3,812m. The net interest margin was 2.34% for 2025, 2.45% in Q4 2025 and 2.48% in H1 2026.

Funding and balance sheet. At 31 December 2025 customer deposits were £443.0bn against net loans of £418.9bn, a loan:deposit ratio of 88%, and the average liquidity coverage ratio was 147%. The bank runs a structural hedge that locks in returns on stable deposits; management expects hedge income to rise by about £1.5bn in 2026 and a further £1bn in 2027.

The moat. More than 20m customers and the leading UK position in business banking, including a large share of start-ups and mid-market companies, give NatWest a sticky, low-cost deposit base. Scale spreads technology, regulatory and compliance costs, and the private banking and wealth arm adds fee income less tied to interest rates.

Capital return policy. The group targets a CET1 ratio of about 13%, pays ordinary dividends of about 50% of attributable profit and uses buybacks to return surplus capital. The next buyback is expected to be announced with the FY2026 results.

5. Financial Health

NatWest reports in pounds sterling under IFRS. The revenue column is total income from each year's annual results and the group's SEC XBRL filings. FY2021 is on the continuing-operations basis restated in the FY2022 results, and earnings per share are adjusted for the 14-for-13 share consolidation of August 2022.

Fiscal Year	Revenue (£m)	YoY %	GAAP EPS	Adjusted EPS	Dividend/share	Long-term debt (YE)
FY2021	10,429	+0.2%	27.3p	27.3p†	10.5p	£8,429m
FY2022	13,156	+26.1%	33.8p	33.8p†	13.5p‡	£6,260m
FY2023	14,752	+12.1%	47.9p	47.9p†	17.0p	£5,714m
FY2024	14,703	−0.3%	53.5p	53.5p†	21.5p	£6,136m
FY2025	16,641	+13.2%	68.0p	68.0p†	32.5p	£6,123m

† NatWest does not publish an adjusted earnings per share figure; statutory basic EPS is repeated so the table stays complete. Its main non-IFRS measures are income excluding notable items (£16,400m in FY2025, £14,648m in FY2024) and return on tangible equity. ‡ Ordinary dividends only; a special dividend of 16.8p was also paid in 2022. FY2021 growth is measured against FY2020 total income of £10,403m. Long-term debt is subordinated liabilities at each year end from the group's SEC XBRL data (ifrs-full:SubordinatedLiabilities, NatWest Group plc, CIK 0000844150). The group also funds itself with other debt securities in issue (commercial paper, medium-term notes, covered bonds and securitisations) of £67,599m at 31 December 2025 and £72,034m at 30 June 2026.

Quarter / Half	Revenue (£m)	Adjusted EPS	GAAP EPS
Q2 2026	4,504	20.1p†	20.1p
Q1 2026	4,358	17.9p†	17.9p
Q4 2025	4,324	17.4p†	17.4p
Q3 2025	4,332	19.8p†	19.8p
Q2 2025	4,005	15.3p†	15.3p
Q1 2025	3,980	15.5p†	15.5p
FY2025 total	16,641	68.0p†	68.0p

Quarterly revenue is total income from the Q1 2026 results and the H1 2026 interim results. H1 2026 attributable profit was £3,035m (Q2: £1,603m) and operating profit before tax £4,318m. At 30 June 2026 ordinary shareholders' equity was £38,748m. Q3 2026 results are due on 30 October 2026.

2026 guidance (raised at H1, including Evelyn). Income excluding notable items of about £17.9bn, including about £275m from Evelyn; operating expenses of about £8.5bn; a loan impairment rate below 25 basis points; return on tangible equity above 19%. The 2028 targets are a cost:income ratio below 45% and return on tangible equity above 18%.

6. Valuation Metrics

Share prices, and figures worked out from them, are not shown for London-listed companies on ChartsView.

Raw metrics, October 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

Metric	Value
Tangible net asset value per share	359p at 30 June 2026, down from 400p at 31 March 2026 after the Evelyn Partners acquisition (31 December 2025: 384p per share)
Return on tangible equity	19.7% in H1 2026 (Q2 2026: 21.0%); 2026 guidance above 19%; 2028 target above 18%
CET1 capital ratio	13.2% at 30 June 2026; target about 13.0%
Net interest margin	2.48% in H1 2026 (FY2025: 2.34%)
Loan impairment rate	19 basis points in H1 2026; guidance below 25 basis points
Loan:deposit ratio	88% at 31 December 2025
Dividend per share	32.5p for FY2025; 12.0p interim for 2026, paid 18 September 2026
Shares in issue	7,928m at 9 October 2026, excluding 178m held in treasury, falling as bought-back shares are cancelled
Short interest (% of float)	— not published for this period. Since 13 July 2026 the Financial Conduct Authority publishes only anonymised aggregate net short positions at or above 0.2% of issued capital; no disclosed net short position for NatWest was found. The NYSE-listed ADS had about 1.3m shares sold short at 15 July 2026 (FINRA data via Equibles). Verify at fca.org.uk.
Days to cover	About 1.0 day for the NYSE ADS (15 July 2026); not published for the London line

7. What Are They Building

A leading UK private bank and wealth manager. Evelyn Partners, bought for £2.7bn on an enterprise-value basis and completed on 30 June 2026, combines with Coutts and NatWest's private bank to build what management calls the UK's leading private banking and wealth business, including the Bestinvest direct-to-consumer platform and the largest in-house team of financial planners. An investor spotlight on Private Banking and Wealth Management is scheduled for 25 November 2026.

AI and simplification. NatWest has partnerships with OpenAI, AWS, Google and Accenture, an AI Research Office and AI tools for all colleagues. AI summarisation of complaints saves about 90,000 hours a year, Bankline has been re-platformed, and AI agents helped onboard 24,000 start-ups in Q1 2026.

Growth partnerships. A strategic partnership with Rightmove, a venture banking unit, £10bn of extra first-time-buyer lending committed for 2026 and the NatWest Boxed embedded-finance platform, which now supplies Sainsbury's Money personal loans, extend the bank's reach beyond its own branches and apps.

Bolt-on books. In 2025 the group took on Sainsbury's Bank's retail assets and liabilities (about £2.5bn of customer assets and £2.7bn of deposits) and a £2.3bn mortgage portfolio from Metro Bank.

8. Competitive Landscape

NatWest competes for UK deposits, mortgages and business lending with the other large UK banks.

Peer	Key 2025 metric
Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L)	FY2025 statutory profit before tax about £6.7bn; RoTE 12.9%, or 14.8% excluding the motor finance charge (2025 results RNS)
Barclays (BARC.L)	FY2025 profit before tax £9.1bn; RoTE 11.3% (FY2025 results call summary)
HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L)	FY2025 reported profit before tax US$29.9bn; reported RoTE 13.3%, 17.2% excluding notable items (annual results 2025)
Standard Chartered (STAN.L)	FY2025 underlying profit before tax US$7.9bn; underlying RoTE 14.7% (final results 2025 RNS)

NatWest's FY2025 RoTE of 19.2% was the highest of this group, reflecting its large, low-cost UK deposit base. Like Lloyds it is almost entirely UK-focused, unlike HSBC and Standard Chartered.

9. Leadership and Insider Activity

Paul Thwaite is Group Chief Executive (CEO), Katie Murray is Group Chief Financial Officer and Rick Haythornthwaite is Chair. Roisin Donnelly succeeded Lena Wilson as chair of the remuneration committee from 1 October 2026. On 3 August 2026 Paul Thwaite, Katie Murray and Solange Chamberlain entered new trading plans allowing them to sell up to 25% of vested shares, expiring by 22 July 2027.

The following director and PDMR dealings were disclosed through RNS notifications in 2026. A PDMR is a person discharging managerial responsibilities.

Name	Date	Type	Shares	Plan Type
Rick Haythornthwaite (Chair) and nine non-executive directors	01 Oct 2026	Purchase	1,835 (Chair); 182 to 495 each (NEDs)	Chairman and NED shareholding policy
James Holian (Chief Customer & Operations Officer)	28 Sep 2026	Purchase	21	Buy As You Earn plan
Robert Begbie (CEO, Commercial & Institutional)	04 Aug 2026	Sale	137,547	Discretionary on-market sale
Robert Begbie (CEO, Commercial & Institutional)	17 Jun 2026	Sale	150,000	Discretionary on-market sale
Paul Thwaite (CEO)	08 Jun 2026	Sale	18,000	Pre-arranged trading plan
Paul Thwaite (CEO)	08 Jun 2026	Vesting; 61,561 withheld for tax	130,784 vested; 69,223 retained	2024 Employee Share Plan
Katie Murray (CFO)	08 Jun 2026	Sale	16,000	Pre-arranged trading plan
Solange Chamberlain (CEO, Retail Banking)	08 Jun 2026	Sale	7,000	Pre-arranged trading plan

10. Key Risks

• Bank taxation (Fiscal): the 28 October 2026 Budget may raise the bank surcharge from 3% to 8%. In H1 2026 the banking surcharge was a £110m tax charge and the UK bank levy £17m, so a higher rate would cut post-tax returns.
• Interest rates and margin (Interest rate): net interest income is about three-quarters of income; lower Bank Rate and competition for deposits could narrow the 2.48% margin, partly offset by the rising structural hedge.
• UK credit cycle (Credit): almost all lending is in the UK. The impairment rate has risen to 19 basis points and a UK slowdown, higher unemployment or weaker house prices would push it higher.
• Capital and Basel 3.1 (Capital): CET1 of 13.2% is close to the roughly 13% target, and Basel 3.1 is expected to add about £10bn of risk-weighted assets on 1 January 2027, which competes with buybacks.
• Integration (Strategic): Evelyn Partners cost about 130 basis points of CET1 and must deliver about £100m of annual cost savings, while the Sainsbury's Bank and Metro Bank books are absorbed.
• Conduct and redress (Conduct / litigation): the FCA's final motor finance redress scheme (March 2026) puts the industry cost at about £9.1bn; a NatWest-specific provision was not found in the sources reviewed. Group litigation and conduct costs were £167m in FY2025 and £45m in H1 2026.

11. Recent Developments

• 01 Jul 2026 — Evelyn Partners acquisition completed. The £2.7bn enterprise-value deal, agreed on 9 February 2026, completed on 30 June 2026, with about £100m of targeted annual cost savings.
• 31 Jul 2026 — H1 2026 results and guidance raised. Total income £8,862m, attributable profit £3,035m and RoTE 19.7%; 2026 RoTE guidance raised to above 19% and income guidance to about £17.9bn. A 12.0p interim dividend was declared.
• 05 Aug 2026 — Executive dealings. Senior executives entered new trading plans and Robert Begbie disclosed the sale of 137,547 shares.
• 18 Sep 2026 — Interim dividend paid. The 12.0p interim dividend, about £955m in total, was paid.
• 29 Sep 2026 — Board committee change. Roisin Donnelly named to succeed Lena Wilson as remuneration committee chair from 1 October 2026.
• 05 Oct 2026 — Chair and directors buy shares. The Chair and nine non-executive directors bought shares on 1 October 2026 under the board shareholding policy.
• 16 Oct 2026 — Bank tax reports. UK bank shares, including NatWest, fell on reports that the Chancellor is considering raising the bank surcharge to 8% in the 28 October Budget.

12. Key Dates to Watch

• 28 Oct 2026 — UK Budget, including any change to the bank surcharge
• 30 Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 results, 7am, with a management presentation at 9am (NatWest investor relations calendar)
• 25 Nov 2026 — Investor spotlight on Private Banking and Wealth Management
• 01 Jan 2027 — Basel 3.1 capital rules take effect, adding about £10bn of risk-weighted assets
• 15 Jan 2027 — latest end date for the £750m 2026 buyback
• 12 Feb 2027 — FY2026 annual results, expected to include the final dividend and next buyback
• 27 Apr 2027 — 2027 Annual General Meeting
• TBC — ex-dividend date for the FY2026 final dividend, not yet published

Bank of England decisions and UK inflation and jobs data are on the ChartsView Economic Calendar. Discuss UK bank results with other investors in the ChartsView Forum.

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