What is NatWest's technology stack?
NatWest's technology stack is built around Amazon Web Services for data and payments, with a small set of AI partners on top. On July 23, 2025 the bank signed a five-year collaboration with AWS and Accenture to consolidate its data streams into a single, bank-wide data platform for its 20 million customers; its payment applications have been re-architected on AWS, where SEPA instant payments and CHAPS now run, and its data scientists work on a platform built on Amazon SageMaker Studio. The Cora digital assistant, launched in 2017, runs on IBM watsonx Assistant and IBM Cloud, and since March 2025 the bank has worked with OpenAI, whose models underpin Cora's agentic financial assistant. All of its roughly 60,000 colleagues have Microsoft Copilot Chat and an internal LLM tool, and engineers use GitLab Duo. Group CIO Scott Marcar wrote in February 2026 that 'a scalable, modular tech stack' now underpins delivery; NatWest invested £1.2bn in technology in 2025, according to Computer Weekly, and says more than 12,000 engineers and coders used AI to write more than 40% of its code that year.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Data as of Nov 11, 2026 · NatWest profile updated Nov 8, 2026 · 29 sources cited on this page · 141 banks profiled on this site · Markdown
What are the layers of NatWest's technology stack?
As NatWest and its vendors describe them. NatWest has not published an architecture diagram, and the sources below do not name its core banking platform or give the share of workloads running in the cloud.
| Layer | What is on the record | Source | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data platform | Five-year collaboration with AWS and Accenture to consolidate 'various data streams into a single, bank-wide data platform, enabled by AI', serving 20 million customers | NatWest, Accenture and AWS release | July 23, 2025[1] |
| Payments | Payment applications re-architected with cloud-native services on AWS, using the Icon Payment Framework (IPF) from Icon Solutions; SEPA instant payments and CHAPS launched on AWS; the multi-region solution went live in just over four months, per CIO of payments technology Ian Povey | PYMNTS | August 7, 2025[2] |
| Machine learning platform | Amazon SageMaker Studio implemented as the standard for the majority of the bank's data science environment, in a joint build with AWS Professional Services | AWS machine learning blog | 2022[3] |
| Analytics and data warehouse | The ESG data team runs on Snowflake, which says the 40-strong team cut costs and carbon footprint by around 80% after decommissioning on-premises systems; The Register adds that Teradata cited NatWest in 2022 as a customer moving on-prem datacenters to its Vantage cloud platform on AWS | Snowflake case study; The Register | Undated; July 23, 2025[10][11] |
| Digital assistant | Cora, launched in 2017, was upgraded to Cora+, powered by IBM watsonx Assistant and built on IBM Cloud, using retrieval-augmented generation to answer inside the chat | IBM case study | 2024[4] |
| Model providers | First UK-headquartered bank to work with OpenAI; the agentic financial assistant inside Cora is 'Underpinned by OpenAI models' | NatWest release; CIO Scott Marcar | March 20, 2025; February 13, 2026[5][6] |
| Speech AI | Speech recognition for the Spending Insights tool adapted with NVIDIA using NVIDIA Nemotron open-source models; the system misheard 20% fewer words in testing | NatWest release | October 14, 2026[12] |
| AI tools for colleagues | All of the bank's roughly 60,000 colleagues have access to Microsoft Copilot Chat and an internal LLM tool; Microsoft 365 Copilot had been rolled out to more than 3,500 colleagues by August 2025 | CIO Scott Marcar; NatWest story | February 13, 2026; August 2025[6][7] |
| Developer tooling | GitLab Duo for code generation, test case creation and workflow automation, used regularly by over 4,700 engineers; more than 12,000 engineers and coders used AI to write more than 40% of the bank's code in 2025 | NatWest story; CIO Scott Marcar | August 2025; July 27, 2026[7][9] |
| Channels and legacy platforms | Legacy platforms decommissioned; Bankline, the digital channel for mid-market and corporate customers, re-platformed; Private Banking & Wealth Management engineering operations migrated from Switzerland to the UK and India | NatWest annual results | February 13, 2026[13] |
| Release speed | New features reach customers four times quicker than in 2021, which Marcar attributes to simplification, the data estate work and the move to the cloud | CIO Scott Marcar | February 13, 2026[6] |
How big is NatWest's engineering organization and what does it spend?
Group Chief Information Officer Scott Marcar wrote in February 2026 that since 2021 the bank has grown its tech and data workforce by around 6,000, almost 1,500 of them graduate hires across the UK and India, that it hired almost 1,000 software engineers in 2025 alone, and that a new India Hub in Bengaluru widens its access to specialist talent.[6]
Computer Weekly reported that NatWest invested £1.2bn in its information technology transformation in 2025. Marcar says AI-assisted coding, simplification across the business and the migration to the cloud contributed £100m of investment capacity in 2025 alone.[8][6]
The bank names its strategic technology partners as AWS, OpenAI and Google in its 2025 annual results, and Marcar adds that working with OpenAI and AWS gives it early access to emerging technologies. IBM has been the partner for Cora since the assistant's launch in 2017.[13][6][4]
What is not on the record in these sources: the core banking system behind current accounts, the number of data centers NatWest still runs, and the percentage of applications that have moved to the cloud. Marcar describes the direction only in general terms, as moving away from legacy platforms toward 'a scalable, modular tech stack'.[6]
What does the NatWest profile record on this topic?
The rows below are the entries of the NatWest AI strategy profile that bear on this page, as of Nov 8, 2026; the profile holds the full record of 33 dated moves, 19 use cases and 45 sources.
| Use case | What the record shows | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agentic spending insights in Cora | 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. | Pilot | [14][15][16] |
| Fraud Triage Agent in Cora | Customers worried about a suspicious credit card transaction describe what happened and are routed to the right fraud, scam or dispute team; nearly 19,000 customer conversations had been handled since launch by 25 September 2026. | In production | [16] |
| Internal GenAI platform and Copilot Chat for all colleagues | Rolled out from April 2025 to the bank's colleagues; the annual report names Copilot Chat and Aiden, an internally developed generative AI tool, and the bank says all 60,000 colleagues have AI tools with 271,000 learning modules completed. | In production | [17][18][9] |
| Cora+ retrieval-augmented answers and agent hand-off summaries on IBM watsonx | Cora+ is powered by IBM watsonx Assistant on IBM Cloud, answers natural-language questions inside the chat using retrieval-augmented generation and, when a human takes over, summarises the earlier conversation; governance guardrails on transparency, trust and accuracy were set up with IBM. | In production | [4][19] |
| AWS and Accenture five-year data and AI platform | A five-year collaboration announced on 23 July 2025 to consolidate data streams into a single AI-enabled bank-wide data platform; the bank names AWS, OpenAI and Google as strategic technology partners and cites the partnerships as part of its productivity gains. | In production | [1][20][18] |
| Amazon Connect AI agents for contact-centre colleagues | 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. | Pilot | [21] |
| Access to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Cyber model | The BBC and Finextra reported in June 2026 that NatWest and Santander already had access to OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Cyber model under existing agreements, while Lloyds, HSBC and Nationwide were offered access; NatWest has not described how it uses the model. | Announced | [22][23] |
| Date | Move | Detail | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 14, 2026 | NVIDIA Nemotron speech recognition selected for Spending Insights | NatWest said it selected NVIDIA Nemotron automatic speech recognition for the speech element of Spending Insights, with the text then interpreted by its proprietary small language models. Tests with 90 colleagues and about 3,000 banking questions, extended with anonymised contact-centre transcripts, showed the system to mishear 20% fewer words across the accents tested (bank-reported). The bank says no customer data was shared with NVIDIA. | [12] |
| Jul 30, 2026 | Triona O'Keeffe named Chief Data and Analytics Officer | NatWest announced that Triona O'Keeffe, CIO for Data & Analytics at the London Stock Exchange Group, will join in January 2027 to lead an expanded function bringing data, AI and engineering together under the Group CIO. | [24] |
| Jun 2, 2026 | NatWest among UK banks with access to OpenAI's cybersecurity model | Finextra reported that OpenAI had offered Lloyds, HSBC and Nationwide access to its GPT 5.5 cybersecurity model, while NatWest and Santander already had access under agreements with OpenAI. The BBC reported the same on 1 June 2026. | [23][22] |
| May 1, 2026 | 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. | [25] |
| Feb 17, 2026 | 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. | [14] |
| Feb 13, 2026 | 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. | [26][27] |
| Feb 13, 2026 | 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. | [20][27] |
| Oct 1, 2025 | Group CIO remit narrowed to technology, AI and data | NatWest created the role of Chief Customer and Operations Officer for James Holian from 1 October 2025; the press release said Scott Marcar would from then focus exclusively on accelerating technology, artificial intelligence and data capabilities. | [28] |
| Aug 4, 2025 | Google Cloud joins the NatWest Accelerator with AI tools and training | NatWest said Google Cloud would provide AI-implementation training, cloud credits and expert sessions to start-ups in its Accelerator community and co-sponsor a new £1 million pitch competition; the 2025 annual report lists Google among its strategic technology partnerships. | [29][18] |
| Jul 23, 2025 | Five-year data and AI collaboration with AWS and Accenture | NatWest announced a five-year collaboration with AWS and Accenture to consolidate data streams into a single AI-enabled bank-wide data platform, speed digital onboarding, automate controls and support complaints handling and fraud prevention. Paul Thwaite said high-quality data would let the bank continue to quietly revolutionise service through AI. | [1] |
| Apr 30, 2025 | Internal GenAI platform and Copilot Chat roll out to all colleagues | NatWest began giving all colleagues access to its internal GenAI platform (the AI Digital Enabler for NatWest, described by the bank as an internal version of ChatGPT) and Microsoft Copilot Chat, with a training programme alongside; the then Chief Data and Analytics Officer called it a launchpad for reuse across the bank. | [17] |
| Mar 31, 2025 | 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. | [21] |
Which cloud provider does NatWest use?
Amazon Web Services is the provider NatWest names most often. A five-year collaboration with AWS and Accenture, signed on July 23, 2025, is consolidating the bank's data into a single platform, its payment applications run on AWS, and its machine learning platform is built on Amazon SageMaker Studio. The Cora assistant runs on IBM Cloud.
Which AI models does NatWest use?
OpenAI models underpin the agentic financial assistant inside Cora, following a collaboration announced on March 20, 2025 that made NatWest the first UK-headquartered bank to work with OpenAI. Cora+ itself runs on IBM watsonx Assistant, colleagues use Microsoft Copilot Chat and an internal LLM tool, and speech recognition was adapted with NVIDIA Nemotron open-source models.
How many engineers does NatWest have?
NatWest has not published a single headcount, but CIO Scott Marcar wrote in July 2026 that over 12,000 engineers and coders used AI to write more than 40% of the bank's code in 2025, and in February 2026 that the tech and data workforce had grown by around 6,000 since 2021.
How much does NatWest spend on technology?
Computer Weekly reported in February 2026 that NatWest invested £1.2bn in its information technology transformation in 2025. The bank's CIO says simplification, AI-assisted software development and the migration to the cloud together freed £100m of investment capacity in the same year.
What coding tools do NatWest engineers use?
GitLab Duo, according to the bank's August 2025 account of its AI workforce program: it supports code generation, test case creation and workflow automation, and over 4,700 engineers were using it regularly after mandatory training on AI ethics and prompt engineering.
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