As the former CEO of NatWest Group, Dame Alison Rose often inspires entrepreneurs by speaking about leadership challenges and her experiences overcoming these in the banking sector.

Many have heard her speak on James Harding’s ThinkIn podcast, where she delves into several leadership topics, from opening opportunities for female founders to supporting small businesses through Entrepreneur Accelerators.

On this podcast, she also explains how, as NatWest’s CEO, she managed the activity happening throughout the UK’s biggest business and commercial bank and kept track of its emissions-related goals.

She goes on to discuss the UK’s entrepreneurial position in the wider global economy and shares how she stayed calm while holding such an influential position.

Here are some highlights from the episode.

Alison Rose on Staying Afloat of Activity Throughout NatWest

As NatWest’s CEO, it was essential for Alison to stay afloat of activity throughout the bank. She oversaw both technical and ethical measures, carving out regular time to communicate with customers, review complaints, and track all emissions activity.

Communicating with customers was a cornerstone of her leadership approach. She often hosted round tables with customers to hear their updates, considering it important to “spend time with customers and talk to them. To ask what’s really going on, so that you get a feel, rather than just looking at the data.”

She would also “get home every weekend with a pile of complaint letters” to personally read and review. On top of this, she monitored NatWest’s whistleblowing process, which encouraged colleagues to share information openly. “We set very high standards of conduct and culture,” she says.

Alison also monitored activity from a sustainability, climate, and emissions perspective. This was “much easier to track” because of NatWest’s “credit policies, appetite policies, and guidelines of lending.”

She gives an example of a balance sheet at the time, which showed that NatWest only lent 0.8% of their funds to oil and gas. She and her colleagues could track and monitor that percentage, “flexing it up and down” as they aligned credit risk policies.

Working Towards NatWest’s Net Positive Goal

In 2020, Alison launched “a very clear strategy on climate” that mapped a route to NatWest becoming net zero by the end of the year. The organisation achieved this goal and aims to be net positive by 2025.

To reach these goals, Dame Alison and her colleagues identified the exposure to oil, gas, and coal on their balance sheet. They decided to phase out coal by 2030, then move on to phasing out oil and gas. The approach was to get their own house in order and then provide the tools and support to guide customers through the transition. They achieved this by:

• Partnering with leading carbon management solution companies like Cogo.
• Providing consumers with information about emissions from their spend via the app.
• Creating tools for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and suppliers to measure their environmental impact and help come up with solutions to minimise this.

Sharing information and offering support was critical to this wholesale rewiring of the economy and management of risk.

Introducing The Transition

To introduce the transition, NatWest’s relationship managers told customers in these sectors about the new goals. They asked the customers to provide a credible transition plan by the end of the year to continue receiving funds. Alison and her colleagues also introduced incentives to reduce fees when customers hit sustainable goals.

Having analysed major sectors for emissions — “which was about 46% of our balance sheet” — Alison and her colleagues decided how to halve these emissions. They knew this would “need collaboration across the public and private sectors” and a focus on global targets.

Alison notes that it was crucial to “start by being very clear about what we were doing, and then, most importantly, funding the transition.” In 2020, she set a target to secure £20 billion of renewable financing by 2021. They were already at £12 billion by May 2021. Demand was so high that she and her colleagues extended the target to £100 billion and, at last results, had reached £78 billion.

Setting A Clear Culture and Policy Suite to Best Protect Customers

Alison believes a bank like NatWest must find the “balance between supporting the economy and not being the moral arbiter of the economy.” To achieve this, a bank needs a clear ethical policy, sustainability policy, and culture.

This means deciding what types of businesses to support and setting environmental, social, and ethical criteria that the bank is prepared to lend by. Having laid this groundwork at NatWest, Alison and her colleagues could ensure they provided “the right support for customers within an ethical and social background.”

Alison gives data protection as an example, noting that NatWest has “huge amounts of data on customers that [it] collects from being in their lives and seeing their payments.” As CEO, she considered NatWest’s “ethical responsibilities as important as [its] data protection responsibility.”

This meant not using or selling the data in any way. “We [didn’t] do any of that,” Alison says. “We [had] a very clear, ethical policy around our use of data for what we [thought was] appropriate in terms of protecting our customers. We almost [viewed] that in the same way as their money. Our job [was] to keep that safe for them as well.”

Alison and her colleagues also “put a lot of systems and controls in place” to prevent financial crime.” Alison managed 4,000 people who specifically managed crime prevention, and NatWest invested almost half a billion pounds in systems and controls to make this possible between 2019 and 2021 alone.

The UK’s “Resilient” Position in the Global Economy

Alison considers NatWest “a bellwether of the UK economy” due to its position as the third-largest retail bank and number-one business bank. This makes it “inherently linked to the success of [its] customers.”

She notes that “regional economies are very different.” NatWest has “regional boards around the country that tap into the local economies,” which “have different dynamics,” she says.

Overall, she considers the UK’s business community “amazingly resilient” and “incredibly entrepreneurial,” as proven by its response to Covid-19. Even with the economy “put into a hard stop for effectively six months,” Alison saw “entrepreneurs and small business owners cope and pivot their businesses” in a way that she considers “really positive” and with “incredible resilience and ambition.” 

Today, “this country still attracts a huge amount of inward investment in terms of fintechs and startups and entrepreneurialism,” Alison says. With many SMEs creating jobs, these “are the lifeblood of the economy.” 

Because of this, Alison believes “there’s a huge amount to be optimistic about in terms of a nation of SMEs and real strengths in our economy through biotech, bioscience, manufacturing, entrepreneurism, and the different sectors.”

She also believes “the ability to export and import talent is a really important one, and we need to make sure we continue to be a place that is vital for skills coming in and being exported.”

“I think that’s a critical part of a thriving global economy,” Alison says. “We’re still one of the global financial centres [that] services the economy more broadly and a big contributor to tax receipts, which drives that.”

How Alison Rose Carried the Weight of CEO Responsibilities

Serving as the CEO of a major bank comes with a huge level of responsibility. A purpose-led strategy, strong team, and customer communication all helped Alison carry the weight of this responsibility.

“When banks get it wrong, I can see the damage we do in people’s lives,” Alison says. This is “because we’re so embedded in people’s lives and providing capital to the economy.” As a result, “having a purpose-led strategy… and knowing that we should be a force for good rather than bad is really important.”

To stay calm running such a big organisation, Alison turned to her “great team,” remembering that running a bank “is a team sport.” She recognises that “sometimes we all make mistakes” and prioritised only focusing on controlling the things she could control.

She also spent “as much time as possible talking to customers and colleagues” so that she and her team could “react quickly and respond quickly like we did during the pandemic.”

“Working really closely and being honest about what we [were] doing” was crucial, as was “trying to make sure we [were] always doing the best job we possibly [could],” Alison says.

Lastly, recognising that she held a “privileged position” helped Alison manage her CEO responsibilities. She would remember, “I have a fantastic job, and I’m very privileged to do it, and I love my job.” This helped “ease the days when you’re lying awake at night wondering what you need to do,” Alison says. “That’s how I [did] it.”

About Alison Rose

The former CEO of NatWest, Alison Rose is the first woman to lead a major UK bank. Having joined the organisation in 1992 as a graduate trainee, she progressed her career within the bank and became CEO in 2019. That same year, she launched the Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship, which has supported hundreds of thousands of women with their entrepreneurial ventures. 

The government commissioned this seminal report, which highlights the challenges that many women in business face and explores the opportunities they can leverage to overcome these barriers. Alison also served as chair of the Rose Review Board until 2023, when she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to the financial sector. 

Today, Dame Alison is a senior adviser to the private equity firm Charterhouse and a member of the Board of Trustee Directors of Business in the Community (BITC). She also advocates for industry action on climate change and has served on the Net Zero Council and the government’s Energy Efficiency Taskforce.