Natwest partners with OpenAI as FTSE giant scales up tech March 20, 2025 Natwest announced on Thursday it has entered a partnership with OpenAI to focus on “bank-wide simplification”. The FTSE 100 lender said it would leverage AI to meet customers’ needs faster and more effectively, whilst increasing productivity and efficiency across operations. The firm said it would deploy “some of the latest and most powerful developments in [...]
AI adoption at UK banks lags behind US rivals March 17, 2025 UK banks are playing catch up to their US and European counterparts on AI adoption, new research has revealed. Evident Insight’s latest Responsible AI Report showed US banks led the way for AI specialists, with 20 positions alone at JPMorganChase – three times the average lender. Co-founder and co-chief executive of Evident Insights Alexandra Mousavizadeh [...]
Natwest shares downgraded by analysts after recent run March 6, 2025 Peel Hunt analysts have downgraded their rating on Natwest stock to ‘Add’ after previously telling investors to ‘Buy’. An ‘Add’ rating serves as a diluted version of the ‘Buy’ recommendation, which strongly recommends investors to purchase the stock. The analysts raised the Natwest’s target price to 510p, up from 470p, but said due to the [...]
Natwest, Barclays, HSBC lead months worth of online banking outages March 6, 2025 Nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies were down for over 803 hours – the equivalent of 33 days – over the last two years. Fresh data from the Treasury Committee shows a minimum of 158 IT failure incidents at banks had affected millions of consumers in the period between January 2023 and [...]
Lloyds Bank analyst ‘favourite’ after annual results February 25, 2025 Analysts have slapped a ‘Buy’ rating on Barclays, Natwest and Lloyds shares following annual results, but said the latter was the “favourite” of the pack. The three UK giants all posted annual results this month, with Barclays and Natwest meeting profit estimates and Lloyds taking a hit. Jonathan Pierce and Priya Rathod, analysts at Jefferies, [...]
Analysts slap 359p price target on Barclays shares after results February 25, 2025 Analysts have reiterated their ‘Buy’ rating on Barclays shares after the lender beat expectations when it reported results earlier this month. The FTSE 100 lender booked a profit before tax of £8.1bn in 2024, ahead of the £8.07bn estimated. “We believe strong capital generation should support a higher valuation and plans to return more than [...]
Natwest Boxed launches savings account with The AA February 24, 2025 Natwest’s financial services platform Natwest Boxed has partnered with The AA to launch an instant savings account. Boxed, which comes from a joint venture between the FTSE 100 lender and European fintech Vodeno, will leverage its embedded finance products for AA customers starting from March 2025. The new savings account will be FSCS-protected and customers [...]
FTSE 100 lenders pocket record total profit February 21, 2025 Standard Chartered was the last of the FTSE 100’s biggest banks to release its annual results, as analysts praised the strong performance across all of the Big Five. Barclays, HSBC, Natwest, Lloyds and Standard Chartered booked an all-time high of £50.3bn in profit in 2024 and returned £35bn to investors. Russ Mould, investment director at [...]
UK banks differ from US on AI strategy February 20, 2025 Banks in the UK are more likely to focus artificial intelligence (AI) strategy on improving customer experience compared to their US rivals, a new report has revealed. NTT Data’s ‘Intelligent Banking in the Age of AI’ found 52 per cent of UK banks were using AI to enhance customer services, rather than cut jobs. This [...]
Reeves told to improve investment incentives by industry bosses February 19, 2025 Rachel Reeves has been told by top global financial firms she needs to ease investment taxes, sources told Reuters. In a meeting with executives from JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Fidelity, Schroders and abrdn on Wednesday, Reeves was told to improve tax incentives for UK consumers. The latest summit in Reeves’ bid for [...]