NatWest Turned a 100-Day Customer Campaign Process Into a One-Day Operation

NatWest Group announced on July 27, 2026 that it has invested 1.6 billion dollars in AI, data, and technology transformation over the past year, and used its Group CIO Scott Marcar's appearance at the Reuters Momentum AI Summit as an opportunity to make a specific disclosure.

The disclosure covers two distinct categories of AI adoption: the breadth of deployment across NatWest's 60,000-person workforce, and the depth of a specific operational transformation that compressed one of the bank's most resource-intensive processes from 60 to 100 days down to a single day.

Workforce AI Adoption at Scale

NatWest said all 60,000 employees now have access to AI tools as part of their daily work. The bank reported completing 271,000 AI learning modules across 2025 and 2026 to date, with 60% of employees participating in optional training beyond the mandatory curriculum.. 

A further 16,000 colleagues participated in Power-Up Your AI Skills initiatives, bespoke business-led training focused on practical day-to-day application.

Senior leadership has been specifically targeted through Leading in an AI World bootcamps, with more than 700 senior leaders enrolled. The program is designed to build the confidence and capability to lead AI adoption across business units rather than leaving implementation to technology teams.

The productivity outcomes from that adoption are quantified across specific areas. In retail, AI tools saved more than 70,000 hours through automated call summaries and simplified complaint responses. 

Across Commercial Mid-Market, 1,200 colleagues saved a further 22,000 hours through AI-enabled meeting preparation, AI tools that surface relevant customer information and context before client interactions. 

12,000 engineers and coders used AI to write more than 40% of the bank's code in 2025, compressing delivery timelines from weeks to hours for new customer solutions. 

Taken together, AI alongside business simplification and cloud migration contributed to 130 million dollars in investment capacity in 2025, the most specific financial return figure NatWest has publicly disclosed from its AI programme.

For customer-facing operations, NatWest's Cora Digital Assistant uses generative AI to deliver more intuitive conversations, and the bank is among the first UK banks to trial agentic AI for personalized spending insights, giving customers greater visibility and control over their finances.

From 100 Days to One

The most operationally significant detail in NatWest's AI account is what the bank did to its customer campaign process, documented in detail through a McKinsey case study published alongside the bank's own narrative.

The starting point was a process that required 60 to 100 days to take a customer’s insight and launch a corresponding campaign. That process involved 40 full-time equivalents, more than 10 handoffs across different teams, and hundreds of different datasets each requiring specialist expertise to navigate. 

Despite the resource intensity, 80% of campaigns produced through this process were rated not relevant by customers, meaning the output did not justify the operational cost.

NatWest's leadership chose not to optimize the existing process incrementally. Instead, the bank asked what it would take to compress the entire cycle to a single day and tasked its data products and digital channels teams with answering that question.

The answer arrived in four months. Using agentic AI, which enables models to conduct complex reasoning and execute multi-step tasks autonomously, NatWest says it rebuilt the process end to end. 

The new system allows customer mission teams to understand customer insights, model different engagement strategies, transform the best ideas into tests, and measure and optimize outcomes, all through a purpose-built AI tool. 

The result: the 60 to 100 day cycle now runs in one day, FTE involvement has dropped from 40 to 4-5, and the 10-plus handoffs have been reduced to zero, according to the announcement.

"If you start to see customers in a more complete way and focus on helping them across their life cycle, you unlock a tremendous amount of value," said Zachery Anderson, Former NatWest Chief Data and Analytics Officer.

Governance Running Alongside Deployment

NatWest's AI governance infrastructure has expanded alongside its deployment. An AI Steering Committee brings together leaders across the bank to review ambition, progress, and direction. 

A Chief AI Research Office, led by Dr Maja Panic, keeps the bank connected to external AI developments and translates them into practical use cases. A Head of Responsible AI, Dr Paul Dongha, oversees a Responsible AI and Data Ethics accreditation built in partnership with the University of Edinburgh, now rolled out to all colleagues.

The bank is working with the Financial Conduct Authority on live AI testing, experimenting with AI use cases in real customer environments, which NatWest describes as contributing to the development of long-term regulation and policy. 

NatWest also engages with the Manchester Responsible AI Network, a cross-industry forum for sharing responsible deployment practices, according to the announcement.

"As AI adoption continues at pace, we believe that empowering colleagues with the critical skills needed to harness it, alongside investing in cutting edge technology, means that we can adapt at speed and shape the future of banking responsibly," Marcar wrote following the summit.