NatWest Group is increasing its use of artificial intelligence in several areas of its business, including customer service, document management for its asset management division, and software development. According to a blog post by Scott Marcar, the company’s chief information officer, 2025 was the first year these systems were deployed at scale. The aim is to increase productivity and customer engagement.
Generative AI in customer service
In customer service, we added generative AI to Cora, the bank’s digital assistant, increasing the number of customer journeys that can be supported by generative AI from four to 21. The bank reports that this has resulted in faster resolution times and less need for human intervention.
Starting early this year, 25,000 customers will have access to Cora’s new agent-based financial assistant built on OpenAI models. Cora allows customers to ask natural language questions about their recent transactions and spending patterns from their bank’s app.
The next phase will add voice translation capabilities that incorporate tone and conversational nuances. Customers will be able to report suspected fraud and manage related cases through the interface.
The impact of AI on internal customer service operations is primarily in saving creation time. For example, the bank’s retail division saved more than 70,000 hours of staff time with automated call summaries and complaint creation tools. Summaries of these customer calls can help with written responses to complaints.
Staff access to Copilot
Marcal says all that c. 60,000 employees have access to AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot Chat and the bank’s own LLM. More than half of our staff have received additional training beyond the basic training provided.
wealth summary
NatWest’s private banking and wealth management operations use AI to improve document management and customer records. Relationship managers use notes, meeting summaries, and correspondence to understand the client’s situation. The system generates summaries of meetings and documents, reducing the time needed to review and record information, freeing up 30% more time to spend face-to-face with clients. Advisors allocate more time to providing advice than to managing.
AWS cloud
The above changes are dependent on changes made by NatWest to its data infrastructure. We restructured our data assets to create a unified customer view and migrated workloads to Amazon Web Services while simplifying some legacy systems. Access to data and scalable computing power supports summarization tools and conversational systems used in customer service.
software development
Software development is the third area where AI will be introduced. The bank’s 12,000 engineers use AI coding tools, and Marker said AI now generates more than a third of the company’s code and drafts, reviews, and tests its software. In 2025, NatWest hired approximately 1,000 graduate software engineers in India and the UK.
An agent engineering experiment in the financial crimes sector increased productivity by 10 times. NatWest plans to expand its agent engineering practice more broadly. The stated purpose is to build and iterate on systems faster.
Fraud prevention
The bank is also investing in fraud detection and risk monitoring with AI-powered analytics designed to identify anomalous activity and advise customers when risks are detected.
Alongside its operational deployment, NatWest has established an AI research office focused on technologies such as audiovisual conversation systems and its own small language models. It has also formalized its governance structure through an AI and data ethics code of conduct, and the organization is also part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Live AI Testing Programme.
conclusion
Across customer service, asset management document processing, and software development, AI is embedded in NatWest’s workflows to save time and improve productivity. The scale of the deployment, which covers tens of thousands of employees and an increasing proportion of customer interactions, shows that AI forms part of NatWest’s operating model, rather than an experimental adjunct.
(Image source: Pixabay)
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