# NatWest Group plc: AI agents, dated Source: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/natwest/ai-agents Record last changed: Oct 26, 2026 11 dated AI-agent moves from Mar 31, 2025 to Sep 22, 2026; 6 agent use cases on the profile, 2 in production. Strategy page: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/natwest ## Agent use cases | Use case | Stage | What it does | |---|---|---| | **AI agents for onboarding, mandates and operations** | In production | Four agents were live across onboarding and mandates in Commercial & Institutional at Q1 2026 and five agents were live supporting colleagues in core processes at H1 2026, with embedded human oversight; 24,000 start-ups were onboarded in Q1 2026 with AI-agent assistance. | | **AI coding assistants and agentic software development** | In production | More than 12,000 engineers and coders used AI to write about 35% of the bank's code at end-2025 (results slides) and over 40% by the May 2026 call; a fully agentic software-development approach was piloted with a reported more-than-10x productivity gain and is slated to scale beyond 2026. | | **Agentic spending insights in Cora** | Pilot | Customers ask natural-language questions about their recent spending in the app; the pilot, underpinned by OpenAI models, was due to reach 25,000 customers by the end of Q1 2026, and a voice-to-voice version on proprietary small language models began trial in September 2026. | | **Agentic complaints investigation under FCA AI Live Testing** | Pilot | An agentic model investigates complaints across multiple data sources and presents a summary to a human complaint handler for approval; the bank plans to move from production-like testing to a live environment. | | **Amazon Connect AI agents for contact-centre colleagues** | Pilot | A test of AI agents that give real-time recommendations to human agents, run with a limited set of experienced agents in one division, aimed at lower average handle time and closer adherence to process; AWS describes user-acceptance testing, not a bank-wide rollout. | | **Fully agentic 'press play' software development** | Pilot | Pilots in the international business and in financial crime use autonomous agents that plan, build and test code under human oversight, reported at 10x productivity gains in February 2026; in May 2026 the CEO said 3 engineers and 7 agents can deliver in about 6 hours what normally takes 12 engineers 6 weeks. | ## Timeline ### Sep 2026 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2026-09-22 | **Co-publishes principles for trusted agentic commerce** NatWest, ASB Bank, Bank of America, Capital One, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and ING published joint principles warning that agentic shopping is advancing faster than standards and consumer protections and proposing disclosure when an AI agent is involved in a transaction. | Announced | [CNBC, Sep 22, 2026](https://cnbc.com/2026/09/22/banks-warn-ai-shopping-bots-raise-scam-fraud-data-privacy-risks.html) | ### Jul 2026 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2026-07-31 | **H1 2026: five agents live, first customer-facing GenAI in Bankline** The interim results reported 7.1 million Cora conversations in H1 2026, colleague usage of AI tools up threefold and AI-powered client intelligence in Private Banking & Wealth Management, five AI agents live supporting colleagues in core processes and the first customer-facing generative AI capability, launched in Bankline. | In production | [NatWest Group plc newsroom, Jul 31, 2026](https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/results-center/31072026/nwg-h1-2026-results.pdf) | ### Jun 2026 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2026-06-23 | **Founding premier member of the FINOS AI Fund** FINOS announced its AI Fund and Governing Board anchored by DTCC, Morgan Stanley, RBC and NatWest as founding premier members, to fund open-source governance, controls and agentic-workflow specifications for regulated financial services. | Announced | [FINOS, Jun 23, 2026](https://finos.org/press/finos-launches-ai-fund) | ### May 2026 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2026-05-05 | **Agentic complaints handling enters FCA AI Live Testing** NatWest's Head of Responsible AI described testing an agentic AI model that investigates complaints across multiple data sources and presents a summarised view to a colleague complaint handler for approval, with performance tracked daily on accuracy, coherence and hallucination. | Pilot | [NatWest Group newsroom, May 5, 2026](https://natwestgroup.com/news-and-insights/latest-stories/ai-and-data/2026/may/collaborating-with-the-financial-conduct-authority-on-testing-ag.html) | | 2026-05-01 | **Q1 2026: four AI agents live for commercial customers' onboarding** The Q1 2026 announcement reported four AI-enabled agents live across onboarding and mandates in Commercial & Institutional with embedded human oversight, and that Cora handled 11% more chats than in Q1 2025, 20% of them by generative AI. | In production | [NatWest Group plc (via FT Markets), May 1, 2026](https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=1323-17572982-6KO5L6JMVM203E07K6DAEHJ83P) | | 2026-05-01 | **Q1 call: over 40% of code written by AI; 3 engineers and 7 agents deliver in hours** On the first-quarter call Paul Thwaite said over 40% of NatWest code is now written by AI, that a proposition typically needing 12 engineers and 6 weeks can in some cases be delivered by 3 engineers and 7 agents in 6 hours, and that 24,000 start-ups were onboarded in the quarter, 25% more than a year earlier, helped by agentic onboarding. | Announced | [Investing.com, May 1, 2026](https://investing.com/news/transcripts/earnings-call-transcript-natwest-groups-q1-2026-shows-strong-eps-revenue-miss-93CH-4652238) | ### Feb 2026 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2026-02-26 | **CFO: all complaint letters AI-written with a human check** At a sell-side roundtable Katie Murray said 100% of complaint letters are now produced by AI with a human check, that a further agent for deciding complaint outcomes was being rolled in, and that the bank expected to create another £100 million or more of investment capacity in 2026; she said there was no single point at which AI would solve the cost target. | Announced | [NatWest Group plc newsroom, Feb 26, 2026](https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/results-center/02052025/natwest-group-q4-25-sellside-roundtable-transcript.pdf) | | 2026-02-17 | **CIO frames 2026 as the year transformative AI becomes real** Group CIO Scott Marcar wrote that 2025 was about building AI capabilities and 2026 the year the building blocks of transformative AI become a reality, citing a £1.2 billion technology, data and AI investment in 2025 and 25,000 customers due to get an agentic assistant in Cora by the end of the quarter. | Announced | [Finextra, Feb 17, 2026](https://finextra.com/newsarticle/47312/natwest-boasts-of-ai-benefits) | | 2026-02-13 | **FY2025 results: AI deployment at scale and a published AI roadmap** The 2025 results and slides reported Cora at about 13 million conversations, AI call summarisation saving more than 70,000 hours a year, a Chief AI Research Office building proprietary small language models, a piloted fully agentic software-development approach with a more-than-10x productivity gain, and a roadmap running through a Fraud Triage Agent (Q2 2026), Cora voice-to-voice (H2 2026) and 'Cora: Your Homebuying Agent' beyond 2026. The bank said it had accelerated AI and data transformation through partnerships with OpenAI, AWS and Accenture. | In production | [NatWest Group plc (company announcement) newsroom, Feb 13, 2026](https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/results-center/13022026/nwg-company-announcement.pdf) | | 2026-02-13 | **CEO on the results call: about 35% of code written by AI, agentic pilots at 10x** On the FY2025 results call Paul Thwaite said circa 35% of code was written by AI across around 12,000 engineers, and that pilots of fully agentic software development in the international business and in financial crime were delivering 10x productivity gains under human oversight. The slides listed more than 12,000 coders, double the 2023 figure. | In production | [NatWest Group plc newsroom, Feb 13, 2026](https://investors.natwestgroup.com/~/media/Files/R/RBS-IR-V2/results-center/24102025/natwest-group-q425-management-presentation-transcript.pdf) | ### Mar 2025 | Date | Move | Stage | Source | |---|---|---|---| | 2025-03-31 | **Amazon Connect AI agents tested with experienced contact-centre colleagues** AWS described NatWest testing Amazon Connect AI agents in one business division with a limited group of its most experienced agents, using Amazon Lex to pick the ten most common call reasons and Amazon S3 as the knowledge store; the stated aims were faster resolution, lower average handle time and better adherence to process. | Pilot | [Amazon Web Services (AWS Contact Center blog), Mar 31, 2025](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/contact-center/insights-and-learning-of-amazon-q-in-connect-at-natwest) | --- Canonical page: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/banks/natwest/ai-agents Part of [BankingNewsAI](https://www.bankingnewsai.com/). Every row is a dated, sourced entry on a bank profile on this site; the stage is the one the bank describes. Index of Markdown pages: https://www.bankingnewsai.com/llms.txt.