The NatWest Group is one of the biggest high street banks in the UK.
As the fifth largest bank in the country, it has 19 million customers and assets worth almost £700 billion. But how ethical is this popular giant?
Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.
Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with the NatWest Group, including its approach to climate, loans and investments, its lending policies and tax conduct.
Below, we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and the NatWest Group's overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
The NatWest Group continues to finance fossil fuel development.
The annual Banking on Climate Chaos report (produced by a consortium of environmental and human rights groups) looks at the extent to which 60 of the biggest banks globally finance fossil fuels. This includes direct investments, as well as mortgages or insurance provided to fossil fuel companies, including those involved in the most damaging extraction such as arctic or Amazon oil and gas or tar sand extraction.
The 2024 report found that while Natwest’s investments in fossil fuels were reducing, in 2023, it still invested over $2 billion (about £1.6 bn) in all areas of fossil fuel extraction. Since the 2015 Paris Agreement it had invested almost $27.5 billion (about £20.6 bn).
In 2023 Natwest announced that it would immediately stop all reserve-based lending for new customers financing oil and gas exploration and extraction – but it added that it would renew, refinance or extend existing reserves until the end of 2025. It also stated it planned to phase out financing coal production and coal related infrastructure in the UK by October 2024 but that global phase out would only happen by 2030.
In November 2024, Channel 4 also reported that despite pledging only to work with companies that have plans that align with the Paris Climate Agreement, Natwest continued to lend to BP. According to the article, Natwest "helped arrange a £400 million bond in 2023, and even at the time of publishing the article [13 November] was involved in helping secure financing for BP”. NatWest’s spokesperson said to Channel 4 news: “Any new financing to Oil & Gas customers is subject to them meeting our risk criteria for the sector and we refute any suggestion that we have not consistently met these publicly published commitments.”
All financial institutions, including banks, make most of their money by lending and investing. Whatever sectors they choose to invest in shape our world. When we looked into the NatWest Group’s lending policies and its Risk Acceptance Criteria we found that it had no adequate policies that would prevent it from lending to sectors that are detrimental to people, animals or the environment.
This included no adequate policies on:
Workers’ rights also weren’t adequately protected in its lending policies. While it excludes "customers using harmful child labour, forced labour, modern slavery or human trafficking", an exclusion of all workers' rights abuses could’t be found. No explicit prohibition of forced labour could be found either.
Our research found that the NatWest Group is financing serious human rights violations by providing loans and underwriting to companies complicit in abuses.
The Don’t Buy into Occupation project investigates and exposes the financial relationships between businesses involved in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and European Financial Institutions. For several decades, the Israeli state has supported its citizens to establish settlements on Palestinian land, often expelling local populations – a practice recognised as illegal by the United Nations. NatWest Group was listed as the 15th largest financier of the 39 included companies in the 2023 report. In forms of loans and underwriting, it provided services worth $3.4 billion (about £2.5 bn) to businesses complicit in the settlements.
The Global Human Rights Benchmark 2024 report – an analysis produced by human rights group BankTrack – evaluates 50 of the largest banks globally on their human rights policies, processes, reporting and practices, using a set of 21 criteria. These criteria are based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights – a set of globally recognised standards for companies – as well as additional categories relating to issues such as the rights of Indigenous Peoples or human rights defenders. The report categorised the NatWest Group as a "follower" – a company that is not yet meeting the requirements of the benchmark and the second lowest scoring category.
NatWest is also involved in the financing of arms and military supply. According to the Don't Bank on the Bomb website, a project led by peace advocacy group PAX, the NatWest Group financed nuclear weapons producers in 2024, by providing loans worth $2.2 billion (about £1.6 bn) to, for example, AirBus or Honeywell.
The NatWest group invests in companies that have no adequate policies to protect animal welfare or the environment.
The Forest 500 project, by not-for-profit organisation Global Canopy, identifies the companies and financial institutions with the greatest influence on tropical deforestation. The Natwest Group scored poorly in the project’s 2024 report, scoring only 2 out of 5, with weak disclosure around its approach to deforestation. The report suggested that companies scoring 2 or 3 have significant progress to make when it comes to their approach on deforestation, conversion and associated human rights abuses.
The Banks for Animals report is a comprehensive evaluation of bank performance regarding animal welfare policies and their support for transitioning to alternative plant-based systems. It ranks companies based on criteria for animal welfare in (medical) testing, fashion, conservation, education, entertainment, and commercial activities. The NatWest Group scored just 29% in the report. Highest scoring companies received 93%.
The NatWest Group has at least two holding companies in countries that are deemed tax havens by Ethical Consumer, Bermuda and Jersey. Although the company had a country-by-country report (a report showing income in each jurisdiction and tax paid), it was not clear that its presence in the above jurisdictions was not for the purpose of tax avoidance.
Its CEO earned £1.7 million in 2023. The company was, unusually in the sector, Living Wage certified but it didn’t have a positive approach to pay ratios.
The text above was written in March 2025, and most research was conducted in February 2025.
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