The banking group said it made an operating pre-tax profit of £7.7 billion for 2025, up 24.4% on the year before.
NatWest Group has said its profits soared by nearly a quarter last year, while pay for its boss jumped by a third, after landing new customers on the back of acquisitions.
The banking group, which also comprises Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank and Coutts, said it made an operating pre-tax profit of £7.7 billion for 2025.
This was up 24.4% on the year before, and higher than the £7.5 billion that some analysts had been expecting.
Income from its retail bank jumped by 15% year on year, with customer deposits growing as savings and current accounts increased, and it acquired a new set of balances after buying Sainsbury’s Bank.
NatWest said about one million Sainsbury’s Bank customers were switched over after the acquisition, which was first announced in 2024.
Mortgage balances also increased, while the bank gained a £2.3 billion mortgage portfolio from Metro Bank.
The full-year results announcement comes days after the bank said it had struck a deal to buy wealth management business Evelyn Partners for £2.7 billion, in a bid to tap further into the affluent market.
Meanwhile, chief executive Paul Thwaite saw his pay package soar by a third last year as he picked up more than £4 million in bonus and share awards.
The group’s annual report showed Mr Thwaite’s total pay jumped to £6.6 million in 2025, up from £4.9 million the previous year.
He landed a £1.5 million annual bonus, which will be paid in early 2026, and £2.5 million in long-term share awards.
Mr Thwaite said he recognised that senior roles in banking and financial services are “very well paid”.
“I appreciate that, I know that. I believe I’m very fortunate and it would be churlish for me to suggest otherwise,” he said.
“There’s obviously a close link between reward and performance, and it goes up and down depending upon performance.”
The report also said that the bank hiked its bonus pool by 11% to £495 million for last year, which was distributed among eligible staff.
It said: “The uplift in the bonus pool for 2025 reflects the increase in profit since 2024 and the strong performance across the scorecard, particularly in relation to financial and customer targets, as well as changes in the underlying eligible population.”
Furthermore, NatWest said 89 so-called material risk takers earned more than one million euro (£870,000) in 2025.
The bank said 20 of these earned between 1.5 million euro and two million euro (£1.3 million to £1.74 million), while 14 earned more than two million euro (£1.74 million).
The lender employed 59,000 permanent staff in total at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, NatWest has been looking to technology and its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to help reduce operating costs and make its workforce more efficient.
“Throughout 2025, AI has been deployed at scale across NatWest,” Mr Thwaite said.
“All 60,000 of our colleagues have access to it in their daily work, and more than 12,000 coders are using AI assistants to write around 35% of all our code.”
He hailed a newly-established AI research office, to dig into fields including advanced biometrics, as well as partnerships with the likes of OpenAI, Google and AWS (Amazon Web Services).
Call summaries using AI technology saved more than 70,000 hours per year for retail banking staff, while reducing full-time employees by 6% per 1,000 customers.
At the same time, NatWest announced plans to close 32 bank branches last month in locations around the UK.
Mr Thwaite said the bank was “very committed to ensuring people have access to our branch services and access to cash” but that this was set against the context of customers “demanding ever-increasing digital services”.
The boss said it had been a “strong year” for the banking group which had set “stretching new targets” for future growth and productivity.