FORM 6-K
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington D.C. 20549
Report of Foreign Private Issuer
Pursuant to Rule 13a-16 or 15d-16
of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934
For
April 21, 2021
Commission
File Number: 001-10306
NatWest
Group plc
RBS,
Gogarburn, PO Box 1000
Edinburgh
EH12 1HQ
(Address
of principal executive offices)
Indicate
by check mark whether the registrant files or will file annual
reports under cover of Form 20-F or Form 40-F.
Form
20-F X Form 40-F
___
Indicate
by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper
as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule
101(b)(1):_________
Indicate
by check mark if the registrant is submitting the Form 6-K in paper
as permitted by Regulation S-T Rule
101(b)(7):_________
Indicate
by check mark whether the registrant by furnishing the information
contained in this Form is also thereby furnishing the information
to the Commission pursuant to Rule 12g3-2(b) under the Securities
Exchange Act of 1934.
Yes ___
No X
If
"Yes" is marked, indicate below the file number assigned to the
registrant in connection with Rule 12g3-2(b): 82-
________
The following information was issued as Company announcements
in London, England and is furnished pursuant to General Instruction
B to the General Instructions to Form
6-K:
NatWest Group plc
Virtual Shareholder Event Statements
21 April 2021
NatWest Group plc will hold its Virtual Shareholder Event ("Virtual
Event") at 2.00pm today. The Virtual Event is being held ahead
of the Annual General Meeting ("AGM") on 28 April 2021 to provide
shareholders with the opportunity to hear from the Chairman, CEO
and other Board members, and ask questions prior to voting on the
AGM resolutions.
The following is an extract of the remarks to be made by Howard
Davies, Chairman, and Alison Rose, Chief Executive at the Virtual
Event.
Howard Davies
Hello and welcome. We have once again decided to hold a virtual
event, separate from our formal AGM. The safety of our staff and
our shareholders are of paramount importance.
Taking on board the feedback from last year, we moved the meeting
forward so that you, our shareholders, can hear what Alison and I
have to say and put to us any questions you may have, before
deciding how you wish to vote on the resolutions.
Maintaining frequent engagement with all our stakeholders is an
important priority for the Board. This meeting builds on our
activity in 2020, including virtual events for retail shareholders
and Board sessions with institutional
shareholders.
Before Alison talks about business developments, I will cover the
governance changes over the last year. There were a number of
changes to the Board.
Baroness Noakes stepped down as a non-executive director in July
2020 after nine years on the Board, with Morten Friis succeeding
her as Chairman of the Group Board Risk Committee. Morten has been
on the committee since 2014 so the transition was very
smooth.
Alison Davis also left the Board in March 2020 after nine years.
Yasmin Jetha was re-appointed as a non-executive director on 1
April 2020 and succeeded Alison Davis as Chairman of the Technology
and Innovation Committee as well as becoming a member of the Group
Sustainable Banking Committee. Yasmin was previously a member of
the ring-fenced bank board.
I would like to thank Sheila and Alison for their outstanding
contributions to the Board over many years. I would also like to
welcome Yasmin back to the Board and thank all of my colleagues for
their continued dedication in the face of very challenging
circumstances.
Effective oversight is especially critical at times like these.
From the start of the pandemic, we quickly established a rhythm of
weekly Board meetings to receive updates from the management team
on our response to Covid-19 and how the implementation of our
purpose was helping to meet the needs of the customers, colleagues
and communities we serve.
Despite the tough operating environment, the bank is making good
progress on its strategy. We continue to grow in our key areas of
focus. We are simplifying our business and accelerating our digital
transformation to serve our customers better at every stage of
their lives. And we have strong levels of capital and
liquidity.
Of course, it is always unfortunate to report a loss, even if our
performance in 2020 was largely driven by an impairment provision
of more than three billion pounds. Most of that provision relates
to potential future loan losses, the full extent of which will not
be known until the impact of the pandemic on the economy becomes
clearer.
And although the persistent low interest rate environment and
ongoing Covid-19 restrictions will continue to challenge the
financial performance of all UK banks for the foreseeable future,
your Group is well positioned to navigate the ongoing uncertainty,
to support its customers and to drive sustainable returns to
shareholders.
In December of last year, the Prudential Regulation Authority made
the welcome announcement that it was lifting its restrictions on
capital returns, subject to certain sensible
guardrails.
Following that decision, and having considered a range of factors,
we announced a final dividend of 3 pence per share at our Full Year
Results.
And subject to permission from the regulators at the appropriate
time, we plan to distribute at least £800 million each year to
2023 through a combination of ordinary and special dividends,
maintaining our 40% pay-out ratio for ordinary
dividends.
With a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio of over 18% at Full Year 2020 we
are operating well above our target range of 13 to 14%. Our
intention remains to return capital to shareholders and we have now
set out a clear path to reach our target by 2023, whilst retaining
the flexibility to pursue other options that create value, such as
our acquisition of a mortgage book from Metro Bank at the end of
last year.
Share prices across the UK banking sector, including our own, saw a
marked decline through 2020. Again, that was to be expected given
the prevailing economic conditions.
There has, however, been positive momentum in recent months as a
Brexit deal was reached and the vaccination programmes rolled out.
Over last 12 months our share price is up by more than
80%.
Last month, we were able to use some of our excess capital to buy
back almost 600m Government shares through an off-market placement
at a total cost to the bank of £1.1 billion.
That directed buy back could only take place with the agreement of
the Treasury and the Prudential Regulation Authority.
We believe it is a good use of capital for the bank and our
shareholders. It helps make progress against the stated ambition of
both the Government and the bank to reduce the Government
shareholding, which, as a result, now stands at just under
60%.
The directed buy back from the Government also triggered a
£500m pre-tax pension payment in line with the memorandum of
understanding announced with our pension trustees in April
2018.
Last month, we also received the disappointing news that the
Financial Conduct Authority has launched criminal proceedings
against the bank for alleged failures to comply with Anti-money
laundering regulations.
We take these matters extremely seriously and the bank has
co-operated fully throughout the FCA's investigation.
As set out in their statement, the case arises from the handling of
funds deposited into accounts operated by a UK incorporated
customer of NatWest.
An adjournment of the initial hearing was agreed by the court at
the request of both parties to allow for a detailed consideration
of the case by NatWest in an appropriate timeframe.
The initial hearing is now set to take place on May
26.
Detecting and preventing financial crime to protect people,
families and businesses is a key priority for the
Group.
Today, we have over 4,000 colleagues dedicated to that task. And,
over the past three years alone, the bank has invested almost
£500m in anti-money laundering systems and
controls.
But we cannot tackle financial crime in isolation. We work with
other organisations, including industry bodies, law enforcement
agencies, regulators and governments to help find solutions to this
shared problem and to improve our own approach.
To conclude, I would like to thank Alison Rose and her team for the
commitment and energy they have displayed in remarkably challenging
circumstances.
As a Board, we firmly believe that this bank has in place a
well-balanced leadership with the necessary experience and
expertise to deliver on our purpose which, to remind you, is that
we champion potential, helping people, families and businesses to
thrive.
By embedding that purpose at the core of our business, we have
signalled our intention to build a relationship bank for a digital
world, to make a positive contribution to society and to drive
sustainable returns to our shareholders.
Finally, I'd like to wish all of you the best during these
difficult times and I will now hand over to Alison.
Alison Rose
Thank you, Howard and may I add my welcome, to everyone here
today.
Given the current health guidance, we are again meeting virtually
and we are pleased to have this opportunity to update you on our
progress over the last year.
In February 2020, we launched our Purpose "to champion the
potential of people, families and businesses" and it has been
tested and proven over the last year. We are breaking down
barriers and building financial confidence, so our 19 million
customers can rebuild and thrive. Our purpose is all about
balancing the needs of all our stakeholders: our customers,
colleagues and communities because when they succeed, so do
we.
We are focusing on three Purpose areas which are commercial
imperatives: Climate, Enterprise and Learning. We know our
activity in these areas will increase resilience and long term
value for those we serve, and drive sustainable returns to you, our
shareholders.
Importantly, we have also made strong investments in the Executive
team who are leading on our Purpose and Strategy attracting
significant talent from the UK and internationally, and injecting
new energy and insight to our collective priorities and
planning.
The bank began last year in a strong financial position, and has
delivered a resilient performance through the strength of our core
franchises and brands, in a challenging environment.
As Howard said, our attributable loss of £753 million for 2020
reflects an impairment charge of £3.2 billion. This is below
our guided range, and a significant proportion relates to future
potential loan losses under IFRS9. Before impairments, we
made an operating profit of £2.9 billion.
We also reduced operating costs by £277 million, exceeding our
£250 million target, which reflects effective acceleration of
our bank-wide transformation.
We continue to operate with one of the strongest capital ratios of
our European peer group, at 18.5%. This capital strength
gives us the flexibility to navigate the continuing uncertainty,
return capital to shareholders, and consider options for creating
shareholder value. In announcing a final dividend of 3
pence per share at our full year results, we intend to pay out
£347 million to shareholders, of which £208 million will
go to the UK Government.
As Howard has covered in detail, we were able to participate in a
directed buy back last month, which we believe is a good use of
capital for our bank and shareholders and further puts us on the
path to private ownership.
We have significant capacity to grow, and our lending is well
diversified with limited exposure to unsecured loans. We have
seen net lending across our Retail and Commercial businesses
increase by 7%; exceeding our 3% target. This includes our
acquisition of a mortgage book from Metro Bank, representing
effective use of our strong capital position, in a key area of
focus.
In all, amidst considerable disruption, we are making determined
progress against the strategy I set out in February 2020, which
prioritises our transformation efforts in four key
areas:
1.
Serving
customers across their lifetime to deepen relationships and
generate growth.
2.
Powering
the organisation through innovation and partnerships, a productive
blend of the right people, technology and insights.
3.
Simplifying
and digitising our business to improve customer experience,
increase efficiency and reduce costs.
4.
Sharpening
our capital allocation, to get our capital working efficiently, and
being deployed effectively, to maximise returns. We are proud
of the teams who, in 2020, reduced the risk-weighted assets in
NatWest Markets by £11 billion, to around £27 billion,
well below our original target.
In addition, we announced the conclusion of our strategic review on
Ulster Bank. As Ulster Bank's business in the Republic of
Ireland will not be able to generate sustainable long term returns,
we have decided to make a phased withdrawal over the coming
years. We expect this withdrawal to be capital accretive over
the duration of the process. This decision has no impact on
Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland.
The sum of all four strategic priorities is: "to build a
relationship bank for a digital world". Recent events
have catalysed both adoption and demand of digital propositions,
and our four strategic priorities are strengthening our customer
offering.
During the pandemic, we stepped-up to become part of the solution
for customers, making possible well over a quarter of a million
mortgage repayment holidays, and innovating new products at
speed. Such as a Companion Card, for vulnerable or isolated
customers.
We kept 95% of our branch network open, which meant thousands of
branch staff helping customers on our highstreets, whilst others
made over 400,000 calls to customers at home. Use of our
digital channels has accelerated, last January, we did around 100
video conference calls with customers, each week. We now do
15,000 a week. We also now have 9.4 million active digital
users, and 7.7 million active users of our mobile app. In
fact, 58% of our Retail customers now use only digital
channels; a 12%
increase, compared to 2019.
There are other important upward trends, we've helped 600,000
customers to start saving, and have had nearly 3 million
interactions on financial capability. For example, through
our new Financial Flex programme, to increase confidence and
understanding in talking about money.
We also provided £31.5 billion of gross new mortgage lending
in 2020 in Retail Banking, which includes over 1200 Green
Mortgages, incentivising those whose homes are more energy
efficient, as part of our commitment to help customers transition
to a low carbon economy.
We recognise that this has been an incredibly tough period for many
businesses, and we have again stepped up to deliver new Government
lending schemes. Over the year, the approved lending amounted
to over £14 billion.
As part of our ongoing, targeted support for enterprise and
climate, we have also provided £1 billion ring-fenced debt
financing for female entrepreneurs, and £12 billion climate
and sustainable financing. Maintaining intelligent risk
management throughout.
Going forward, we are making targeted contributions to business
recovery and growth, partnering Government and drawing on our own
expertise, to break down key barriers. We are committing
£6 billion to support SMEs increase their productivity and
sustainability, and we are working through our Regional Boards to
relaunch and deliver our market leading enterprise
proposition. This provides more local businesses the support,
training or growth opportunities they need.
We also pivoted our enterprise initiatives to be delivered
digitally and, by full year results this February, our 12
accelerator hubs had held over 1,000 virtual events for more than
45,000 attendees.
Earlier this month, I was on a virtual visit to the South West,
marking the partnership of NatWest Group with Bristol Green Climate
Partnership and Bristol Council, to launch their Climate Action
Programme. This aligns with our ambition to facilitate
faster, simpler transition to a lower carbon future, for business
customers. We're providing billions of new green financing,
and have also joined forces with Microsoft, whose cloud, data and
AI platform, combined with our customer relationships and insight,
can help more companies to better understand, and reduce, their
emissions.
Last year, we achieved Net Zero in our own operations and have done
extensive work to analyse and mitigate our portfolio of climate
risk. We have committed to be Climate Positive by 2025 and,
last year, NatWest Markets helped issue 36 Green Bonds, raising
£23 billion for environmental activities. This year to
date, we've already lead managed 20 Green Bonds, totalling £21
billion.
As the principal banking sponsor for COP26, and a leading lender
for renewables, we are proactively supporting the transition and
the critical greening of UK industries.
We couldn't achieve all this, without the extraordinary efforts of
our colleagues who rallied to work in new ways, and be there when
our customers needed us most. We set up 50,000 colleagues to
work remotely and have since brought in a raft of additional
support. From a new, 24/7 GP line, to the SilverCloud
wellbeing platform, to the launch of the Learning Academy.
We've also introduced a number of Covid-secure measures in branches
and office sites, to keep each other safe.
Meanwhile, colleagues themselves have done a great deal to support
community services. For example, we repurposed part of our
Gogarburn campus, to become one of the UK's biggest foodbanks, both
for surrounding communities and, in the evening, for NHS Lothian
staff. We've also opened up our Younger Building in Edinburgh
as a mass vaccination centre, and became a Corporate Patron of the
National Emergencies Trust, raising £10 million last year, by
match funding customer donations. We have also announced a
£1 million fund for Save Lives to support survivors of
economic and domestic abuse.
I am proud of the compassion and initiative of colleagues across
the business, finding new ways to improve the strength and
wellbeing of our communities. And I would like to thank all
of them.
Our People are at the heart of our bank, they bring our Purpose and
Strategy to life. In the past year, we have found new ways to
support our customers at pace, whilst exceeding the core financial
targets we set in February 2020, around lending growth and cost
efficiency.
I have great confidence in the team we have assembled on the
Executive Committee, who are leading on the plan we set out to the
market this February, including our RoTE target of 9-10%, by
2023.
We are working together, as One Bank, to secure sustainable growth
through our strategy. One Bank means collaboration across the
Group to identify and deliver the right priorities, delivering
fantastic customer experiences, being simpler to deal with, and
creating value for shareholders.
This is how we will champion the potential of people, families and
businesses, and drive sustainable returns.
Thank
you.
Forward looking statements
This document contains forward-looking statements within the
meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform
Act of 1995, such as statements that include, without limitation,
the words 'expect', 'estimate', 'project', 'anticipate', 'commit',
'believe', 'should', 'intend', 'will', 'plan', 'could',
'probability', 'risk', 'Value-at-Risk (VaR)', 'target', 'goal',
'objective', 'may', 'endeavour', 'outlook', 'optimistic',
'prospects' and similar expressions or variations on these
expressions. These statements concern or may affect future matters,
such as NatWest Group's future economic results, business plans and
strategies. In particular, this document may include
forward-looking statements relating to NatWest Group plc in respect
of, but not limited to: the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, its
regulatory capital position and related requirements, its financial
position, profitability and financial performance (including
financial, capital, cost savings and operational targets), the
implementation of its Purpose-led strategy and the refocusing of
its NatWest Markets franchise, its ESG and climate related targets,
its access to adequate sources of liquidity and funding, increasing
competition from new incumbents and disruptive technologies, its
exposure to third party risks, its ongoing compliance with the UK
ring-fencing regime and ensuring operational continuity in
resolution, its impairment losses and credit exposures under
certain specified scenarios, substantial regulation and oversight,
ongoing legal, regulatory and governmental actions and
investigations, the transition of LIBOR and IBOR rates to
alternative risk free rates and NatWest Group's exposure to
economic and political risks (including with respect to terms
surrounding Brexit and climate change), operational risk, conduct
risk, cyber and IT risk, key person risk and credit rating
risk. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of
risks and uncertainties that might cause actual results and
performance to differ materially from any expected future results
or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking
statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to differences
in current expectations include, but are not limited to, the impact
of the Covid-19 pandemic, future acquisitions, the outcome of
legal, regulatory and governmental actions and investigations, the
level and extent of future impairments and write-downs (including
with respect to goodwill), legislative, political, fiscal and
regulatory developments, accounting standards, competitive
conditions, technological developments, interest and exchange rate
fluctuations, general economic and political conditions and the
impact of climate related risks and the transitioning to a low
carbon economy. These and other factors, risks and uncertainties
that may impact any forward-looking statement or NatWest Group
plc's actual results are discussed in NatWest Group plc's UK 2020
Annual Report and Accounts (ARA) and NatWest Group plc's filings
with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not
limited to, NatWest Group plc's most recent Annual Report on Form
20-F and Reports on Form 6-K. The forward-looking statements
contained in this document speak only as of the date of this
document and NatWest Group plc does not assume or undertake any
obligation or responsibility to update any of the forward-looking
statements contained in this document, whether as a result of new
information, future events or otherwise, except to the extent
legally required.
Legal Entity Identifier:
2138005O9XJIJN4JPN90
Date: 21
April 2021
|
NATWEST
GROUP plc (Registrant)
|
|
|
|
By: /s/
Jan Cargill
|
|
|
|
Name:
Jan Cargill
|
|
Title:
Chief Governance Officer and Company Secretary
|
Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE:RBS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE:RBS)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024