After finding itself at the centre of a political storm last summer, when it was accused of “de-banking” by Nigel Farage, bosses at NatWest Group will have welcomed a return to more routine matters when its results for 2023 were announced today.
The bank confirmed the appointment of Paul Thwaite as permanent successor to former chief executive Dame Alison Rose and the Liverpudlian could scarcely have wished for a more benign response from the stock market to the first annual results released under his leadership.
Shares in the state-backed owner of Royal Bank of Scotland climbed more than 7% after the bank served up higher profits for 2023 than had been anticipated by City watchers and lower provisions for bad debts. It is expected impairments will remain low this year, albeit the bank said the outlook for the economy remains uncertain.
READ MORE: Music heavyweights back Glasgow vinyl pressing plant
Following the upheaval of last summer, when Dame Alison fell on her sword after admitting to being the source of BBC stories concerning accounts Mr Farage held with Coutts, NatWest’s private banking business, Mr Thwaite is likely to have been pleased that the focus today has generally been on banking issues.
But that is not to say that NatWest does not have its challenges to seek.
It now appears, for example, that the boost to income banks have received from the recent surge in interest rates has plateaued. NatWest, moreover, saw customer deposits tumble by £13.8 billion, or 3.2%, to £419.1bn in 2023 as customers moved money to interest-bearing accounts in an extremely competitive market, although that “migration” was found to have slowed in the final quarter. Margins also showed signs of coming under pressure in the fourth quarter.
READ MORE: Douglas Laing & Co names founder's granddaughter as boss
With official figures on Thursday showing that the UK had fallen into recession in the final quarter of 2023, steering the bank through economic conditions that will continue to challenge many businesses and households will not be easy.
But with a strong balance sheet, and an imminent retail offer for the UK Government’s near-40% stake in NatWest paving the way to full private ownership, the outlook could certainly be a lot worse for the new boss.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel