NatWest preps investor payouts as lender's profits soar
The FTSE 100 bank, which returned to full private ownership earlier this year, posted 18 per cent growth in operating pre-tax profits to £3.6billion for the first six months of the year, beating analysts' forecasts of £3.46billion.
NatWest gained 1.1 million new customers over the period, both 'organically' and from acquiring Sainsbury's Bank in May.
Customer deposits increased by £1.6billion to £319.9billion, including Sainsbury's Bank savings balances of £2.4billion and growth within NatWest's commercial and institutional business.
This helped offset a sharp rise in impairment losses to £382million, up from £48million last year, primarily reflecting 'a small number of individual charges' in the commercial and institutional portfolio.
The group faced a retail impairment loss of £219million, compared with £106million over the same period last year, which Natwest said 'was largely driven by the impact of balances acquired from Sainsbury's Bank'.
However, overall operating expenses fell 1 per cent over the period to just over £4billion as NatWest said it was 'making good progress on becoming a simpler bank, delivering efficiencies from our investment programme'.
NatWest said: 'We are digitising more customer journeys and deploying AI to improve our productivity and customer experience which is reflected in our improved NPS scores across all three businesses.
'We announced new collaborations with OpenAI, AWS and Accenture to accelerate our data simplification and enable greater personalisation for our customers.'
Group operating costs, excluding litigation and conduct costs, are expected to be around £8.1billion for the full-year.
NatWest announced a 9.5p interim dividend and a £750million share buyback.
The lender also upgraded its key profit performance guidance for this year, saying it now expects to achieve a return on tangible equity of 16.5 per cent, from previous guidance of up to 16 per cent.
Boss Paul Thwaite said: 'With positive momentum in our business, we are ambitious for the future and see clear opportunities for further disciplined growth.
'Having returned to full private ownership in Q2 2025, NatWest Group is well placed to step up and play its part in supporting economic growth across the UK and, in doing so, to create sustainable value for all our stakeholders.'
NatWest's performance follows results from.
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