Text: What is working for Commercial & Institutional really like?
Shatta Bhowmick, Social Community Capital Team, Commercial Mid Market, Commercial Banking Graduate: I’m a graduate, currently in my second rotation in the Social Community Capital team. And fun fact, they’re an independent charity that has been funded and supported by NatWest. And what we do is we offer alternative funding to business, charities, and social enterprises that don’t qualify for mainstream loans. And it’s just so amazing to be part of a team that is dedicated to making tangible differences in communities.
Tom White, Securitised Products, Corporate Banking Structured Finance: I work in Securitised Products in C&I. The type of work, it involves is a lot of credit, a lot of understanding businesses, understanding ourselves, and the solutions that we can offer and how these, how these solutions can work for a customer, how it can help them realise their ambitions.
Carla Floyd, Head of Debt & Financing Solutions, Corporate Banking Structured Finance: It’s a fast-paced and dynamic environment, which is fantastic because I’m never bored. The external environment around us is always changing, so we need to stay on the front foot, anticipate change and what the key themes that may be that affect our customers and products and services, and then make sure we position the business around that.
Clara Slee, Financial Crime, RBS International: My role involves communicating information between regulators and stakeholders through writing reports, opinions, and analysing data. Working for C&I feels collaborative and exciting. It’s small enough that you feel like you’re part of a community and you really feel welcomed, but it’s large enough that you have a variety of people in work, and you really feel the change and experimentation.
Mike Rankine, Performance & Business Management, Customer Goals and Journeys: We are a business that serves customers from your, your local plumber or shop owner right up to, multinational companies, household names, household brands, etc. And actually how they can be very different but, in some ways, how they can be kind of be quite similar. So that’s a challenge I think to, to get your head around just just the scale of this business and the impact that it has.
Text: What do you enjoy most about working here?
Tom: What I enjoy most about working in C&I is its relevance to life around us. The transactions we do mean that we have to learn about companies that we see outside every day.
Andy Hunt, FI Solutions, NatWest Markets: But for me, it’s the people. I work with some brilliant individuals and teams across trading, structuring, legal and credit to name a few. But on a personal level, I think the business has made huge strides over the past few years to focus on the ‘me’, including on mental and physical well-being and life outside of work, including the major development around shared parental leave. For me, this is a huge differentiator to our peers and makes it a great place to work.
Carmen Cheng, Sustainability and Propositions, Commercial Mid Market: So whilst I really enjoy the flexible working, which helps me juggle my family responsibilities, I actually really enjoy coming into office to see people, to talk to people, even just a coffee chat sometime just really energises you and giving you new ideas.
Text: What surprised you since you started working here?
Anna Henderson, Business Architecture Enablement, Customer Goals and Journeys: One of the most surprising things that I’ve experienced since I’ve been here is the actual living up to the promise when NatWest says it invests in its people so people can thrive.
Shatta: I’ve been pleasantly surprised by seeing the amount of support and the resources that are there for someone that is in a graduate scheme. The commitment to nurturing new talent, but also same time providing real, impactful projects has really exceeded my expectations.
Tom: What surprised me most about working in C&I and NatWest is the importance of everything we do and how relevant it is to the UK economy.
Carmen: So what strikes me when I started working for the bank was the diversity of the people. And I’m not just talking about the ethnicity or the gender. But it’s also, for example, the education and the training background as well. You could easily be working with someone who’s been a lawyer for the past ten years, or someone who has a PhD in climate science, but also, it could be someone who has been working at a desk at a branch, who started there, but they’re working their way up as well. So it is very important because it creates a great environment for diversity of thought.
Text: How would you describe the culture?
Anna: I think the culture here is very interesting. I’ve worked in a whole variety of organisations. And I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere with a culture quite like that is at NatWest here.
Shatta: The way I would describe the culture at NatWest is as inclusive, forward-thinking and collaborative. It’s a place where diverse ideas are welcome and teamwork is always encouraged.
Mike: Also the great, great culture of learning, and the organization as well. So there are opportunities to learn so much, which is, which is great. And people given the time to be able to go to go ahead and do that and pursue things that they’re passionate about and things that will be important to the organisation in the future as well.
Anna: I think that the people here are really committed and really believe in the organisation in the way that you don’t often see with other organisations. I think there’s a real commitment to supporting the customer and a real belief that if we keep working hard, we can continue to make a real difference for people, and the wider world that we live in.
Carla: What’s fantastic is that we’re a team with a common set of goals around serving our customers, and that sense of unity is absolutely critical to our success.
