- By Vishala Sri-Pathma
- Business reporter
Image source, Getty Images
Over three decades in banking, Dame Alison Rose, the head of NatWest Group, has forged a reputation as a champion of women in business.
Now she is making headlines for being at the centre of a row between the former leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage and NatWest’s private banking arm, Coutts, which has cut the Brexiteer loose as a client.
Mr Farage said his account was closed for political reasons but the bank said it was a commercial decision.
Dame Alison has since apologised to Mr Farage for “deeply inappropriate” comments made about him in a report assessing his suitability as a Coutts customer.
She said the comments did not reflect the bank’s view and she had written to him to say sorry for the remarks.
The move marks a high-profile apology from an executive often referred to as the most powerful woman in British banking.
As head of NatWest Group, formerly known as the RBS Group, Dame Alison oversees a bank with some 19 million customers in the UK and 60,000 employees globally.
She got the top job in 2019, becoming the first woman to lead a major British bank.
The 53-year-old, mum-of-two told The Telegraph in 2021 that running NatWest during the pandemic, despite its challenges, “was much easier than managing home schooling” during lockdown.
Job for life
Dame Alison’s promotion capped off 30 years with the firm, where she started as a trainee in 1992 after graduating from Durham University.
Earlier this year, she pocketed a bumper payout of more than £5m on the back of strong profits, receiving the first bonus NatWest has awarded a chief executive since the government rescued the company during the 2008 financial crisis, when bank lending almost ground to a halt.
She has called the crisis a “pretty traumatic period” for the industry.
“There was the experience of watching everything we had been working on change, and the terrible situation that RBS found itself in,” she told the Evening Standard in 2016. “That was a pretty emotional and difficult experience.”
The government has been slowly selling its stake in the company, with public ownership falling below 50% for the first time since the bailout last year.
Dame Alison, who was raised in a military family that travelled widely, led a review of female entrepreneurship for the government in 2019 prior to becoming chief executive. She was named to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new business council just days ago.
It was after she led this review that rumours started circulating that she would become the boss of the then RBS-group.
As boss at NatWest, she has drawn headlines for changes, such as granting up to a year of leave to new fathers and ending new loans to oil and gas companies.
She was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire by King Charles III at the start of this year.
