NatWest Group has announced a new five-year collaboration with Amazon Web Services and Accenture to transform its customer service by accelerating the modernisation of its digital, data and analytics, and AI capabilities.

The collaboration will enable NatWest to provide more intuitive, engaging and personalised services to its 20 million customers – drawing on the combination of Accenture and AWS’s cloud and AI, and banking expertise to help anticipate and respond to customer needs faster and more effectively.

In parallel, it will further enhance colleagues’ skills and foster a data-driven culture through access to new AI technologies that empower them to more swiftly and easily serve customers.

NatWest hopes the collaboration will help it deliver against its strategic priorities ranging from disciplined growth, bank-wide simplification, and risk management.

“This collaboration with Accenture and AWS is key to helping us progress the transformation of NatWest as we become a simpler, more technology and data-driven bank,” Paul Thwaite, CEO of NatWest Group, said.

“Our industry – and the expectations of our customers – are changing rapidly and we are building our capabilities in order to understand and serve their needs better and faster than ever before.

“Equipped with high quality data, we can continue to quietly revolutionise how we serve our customers through the use of AI and other technologies in order to provide more personalised products and services as a trusted partner in the moments that matter most.”

AI and data will play a central role in meeting NatWest’s priorities, ranging from creating real time communication for customers, moving data streams into a bank-wide data platform, and agile capital management.

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“NatWest has a bold vision to use the power of its data to seamlessly tie together its products, channels and customer touchpoints — a major step forward in making banking easier for its customers and providing them with more personalised experiences,” Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO of Accenture, said.

“We are excited to partner with NatWest and AWS and bring our deep industry experience and data and AI expertise to this reinvention, which will increase efficiency, drive greater productivity and create value. Together, we will help NatWest raise the bar for how banks can use data and AI to better serve customers and reach new levels of performance.”

Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, said “NatWest is working with AWS and Accenture to bring together banking data to better serve customers.

“Using AWS’s deep and extensive experience in financial services technology, NatWest is setting new standards in banking as a more agile, customer-focused bank.

“Their AI-enabled platform will deliver the agility, security, and reliability needed to deepen customer relationships and drive growth. This exemplifies how forward-thinking financial institutions work with AWS to solve real problems and innovate at scale.”

Image credit: Dominic Lipinski/NatWest Group