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NatWest results 2022

ended 17. February 2023

NatWest, in its annual results published this morning, said net lending increased by £7.3 billion to £366.3 billion during 2022, primarily reflecting £14.4 billion of growth in Retail Banking mortgages, with gross new mortgage lending of £41.4 billion. It also said it had a net impairment charge of £337 million, much less than Barclays (£1.2bn) earlier this week. We asked brokers for their thoughts (below).

3 responses from the Newspage community

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Editor
Samuel Mather-Holgate
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
The data shows significant growth from last year, but we are comparing it to a year that was stagnant at best, following the major effects on the market of Covid, so you would expect this. The loan impairment charge is interesting. Barclays was significantly higher, but that’s because they offer lending in the US at a level that NatWest doesn’t. It might imply the UK housing market is in a stronger position than our cousins across the pond.
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Editor
Riz Malik
Independent Financial Adviser at R3 Wealth
Given the current economic outlook, it will be interesting to see if net lending grows similarly in 2023. At least the government & the treasury stands to benefit from the positive results given their significant ownership.
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Graham Cox
Director at Bridging Hub
NatWest are definitely one of the more cautious lenders. For self-employed applicants, they only lend 4x income, and the industry standard is 4.5x. So that may be part of the reason for the much lower impairment charge compared to Barclays. The government no doubt imposes strict controls as it still owns a sizeable stake in NatWest's parent, RBS.