NatWest Group delivered a striking 24% rise in pre-tax profits for 2025, reaching £7.7 billion, and executives credit artificial intelligence as a central driver behind the performance. The bank now plans to scale its AI investments even further in the coming year.
Chief executive Paul Thwaite highlighted the broad deployment already in place. “Throughout 2025, AI has been deployed at scale across NatWest,” he said. “All 60,000 of our colleagues have access to it in their daily work, and more than 12,000 coders are using AI assistants to write around 35% of all our code.”
The results reflect deliberate choices that many business leaders recognise from their own organisations. When a company equips every employee with powerful tools, efficiency gains follow quickly.
NatWest invested £1.2 billion in technology, AI, and process simplification last year. Those efforts unlocked an extra £100 million in investment capacity, a figure the bank expects to grow in 2026.
Cost savings stand out clearly. The cost-to-income ratio fell to 48.6%, helped by automation, cloud transitions, and AI-driven productivity. The bank targets below 45% by 2028. Staff now use tools such as Microsoft Copilot alongside NatWest’s internal large language model. AI handles call summarisation, fraud detection enhancements, and faster code generation.
Author: Oje. Ese