NatWest has reported a sharp rise in first-half earnings, becoming the latest British high street bank to surpass analyst expectations for profit growth.
The banking group posted an operating pre-tax profit of £4.3 billion for the six months ending June 2026, a 20% increase compared with the same period in 2025.
That result comfortably exceeded the £4.1 billion that most analysts had anticipated ahead of the announcement.
NatWest joins Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group in beating market forecasts for profit growth across the first half of the year.
Income rose 11% year on year, fuelled by expansion across the bank’s retail, commercial, and wealth management divisions.
The bank also narrowed its cost-to-income ratio by 2.8 percentage points year on year, reflecting tighter control over operating expenses relative to revenues.
Approximately £250 million in gross cost savings during the first half helped drive that improvement across the business.
NatWest credited “ongoing structural simplification and sustained investment in our technology platforms to improve productivity and deliver simpler, faster and better customer experiences” for the gains.
Central to that technology push has been a broad rollout of artificial intelligence tools across internal operations and customer-facing services.
Chief executive Paul Thwaite said AI “alters how people live and work” and that “there is no doubt that AI is reshaping financial services.”
Thwaite emphasised that NatWest had “put AI into the hands of our 60,000 staff,” with the technology deployed in areas including fraud protection and an agentic AI assistant.
He noted that “the real value of AI comes not from the technology but when it builds stronger relationships, supports productivity and strengthens trust.”
On the wealth management side, NatWest said its acquisition of Evelyn Group was beginning to deliver results and was expected to improve the bank’s full-year financial performance.
Thwaite described wealth management as a “fast-growing area of the economy and of our bank,” signalling continued strategic commitment to expanding that business.
He argued that broader access to financial advice remained a pressing national issue, stating: “I don’t think it reflects well on the country that only 9% of the population get financial advice.”
Thwaite said the bank was targeting customers across multiple segments, adding: “When we think about private banking and wealth management, we’re thinking about our retail bank, our mass affluent customers, as well as high net worth customers.”
He concluded that the combination of retail reach and wealth services made the opportunity significant, calling it “structurally a big opportunity” for the group going forward.
