Published : 2 months ago, on 16/10/2024

In 2022, Dame Alison Rose appeared on Bloomberg’s popular talk show Leaders with Lacqua. The show sees high-profile journalist Francine Lacqua interview some of the world’s most influential individuals, exploring what drives them, where they seek inspiration, and their definitions of success.

In Alison’s interview, she discusses her leadership approach as the former NatWest Group CEO and shares her predictions for the future of banking and the British economy. Here are some of her insights.

Alison Rose’s Journey From Graduate to CEO

Dame Alison Rose remembers starting her graduate scheme at NatWest in a “great rotation” where she had the opportunity to try various jobs. “My abiding memory was that I had no idea what I was doing,” Alison says. “Banking from the outside in is really complex.”

She remembers being “nervous and not really knowing what I was going to do.” Nonetheless, she launched herself into the training programme, which she describes as being “great fun.”

For Alison, the best thing about being a graduate is that “you get to see different types of leaders” and “borrow” leadership styles as you “find yourself.” While exposed to different kinds of leadership, Alison had no idea that she would become the bank’s CEO 30 years later.

“It was all about trying to learn,” Alison says. “I really thought I’d be in banking for two to three years and then go and do something else.”

Alison never had a 5- or 10-year plan for her career growth. She stuck with NatWest because she consistently found that “the next job was more interesting… It was always an interesting challenge, and it was always with great people,” she says.

“I think those are two really important ingredients in any career or any firm,” she adds. “Work with great people, work with great teams, have jobs that challenge you.”

How Alison Rose Balanced Leadership Challenges

As the CEO of NatWest, Dame Alison had to balance multiple challenges. She needed to consistently motivate her teams, communicate with shareholders, and strategise for the bank’s future.

To achieve this balance, Alison led with a “purpose-led strategy.” This involved consistently keeping her customers, communities, shareholders, and stakeholders happy. She considers the biggest challenge of any CEO to be “leading through ambiguity and with authenticity” in a “world [that] is so uncertain and moving so quickly.”

Alison served as NatWest’s CEO during a particularly tumultuous time — the era of Covid-19 and the beginning of the war in Ukraine. She had always taken a “hands-on” leadership approach. However, these developments meant she needed to be even more involved in day-to-day activities.

“When I took over as CEO [and] spoke to the team, I talked about creating a learning organisation,” Alison says. Driven by the fast, unpredictable change in global circumstances, she knew they “had to stay really close to customers and be able to work with them and build a tight relationship.”

This period “centred” Alison on “the importance of clear leadership [and] clear direction” and helped her “understand the balance that people have in their lives.” As banking is service-led, it’s essential to “stay close to your customers, support them through their lives, and make sure you drive a very clear path for your colleagues,” she says.

Rebuilding Banking’s Reputation

Alison notes that it can be difficult to understand exactly what a bank is and what it does. Banks “provide the fuel to the economy that creates jobs,” she explains. They “provide huge amounts of support to communities and big education programmes.”

Of course, they provide banking services too. “But banking is almost seen as a utility rather than a service,” Alison says. She reflects that, “since the global financial crisis, banks lost trust” with customers.

“It takes a long time to rebuild that,” Alison explains. “So you have to do that customer by customer.” However, she believes the reputation of banks is improving. “We stood up during the pandemic, and we were there to support customers, and we’re part of helping keep the economy going,” she says. “Hopefully the value of the banking sector has become clearer.”

NatWest: No Longer Majority-Owned by the Government

During Dame Alison’s tenure, NatWest hit a milestone where the government’s shares in the bank dropped below 50%. “It was a really important milestone,” Alison says, “especially for colleagues.”

“When I took over, the government held 64% [of company shares],” Alison reflects. She describes the government as “a great shareholder” but considered “getting below 50%” and no longer being majority-owned a testament that she and her colleagues were “delivering the right strategy and delivering value.”

Supporting Customers With Inflation-Related Challenges

Although the economy recovered from Covid-19, the rising interest rates that followed caused difficulties for numerous people, families, and businesses. Many hadn’t dealt with inflation-related challenges for 10 years.

Fortunately, spending time up and down the country at branches and offices, NatWest’s teams could dedicate a lot of time to “talking to businesses and helping them plan and deal with it,” Alison says.

At the time, NatWest didn’t see huge signs of distress in terms of customers asking for loans or other kinds of help. It was “mainly concerns,” Alison says, “but with fuel prices rising,” it was a distressing time, especially for lower-income families.

She recalls receiving “a lot of questions from business owners” about how they could manage disruption to supply chains, fund their working capital, restructure their pricing mechanisms, and save money to afford the increase in fuel prices.

In response to these questions, NatWest would run a financial health check. This allowed them to “save people money by bringing their finances together,” Alison explains.

At the other end of the scale, Alison notes there was “a huge amount of liquidity sitting in the economy, on corporate balance sheets, in businesses from all the quantitative easing that [had] been done.”

This meant there was “a number of things pulling against each other, which [made] it very complex,” she says. As such, it was “an important time for banks” because they could “provide practical help and support to people.”

Support For Mortgage Customers

Meanwhile, the mortgage market stayed strong with plenty of demand. At the time, most of NatWest’s mortgage products were on fixed-rate terms. This meant the interest rate rises didn’t cause an immediate problem. This was also the case with businesses — half of NatWest’s small businesses were on fixed-rate borrowing.

However, home and business owners needed to plan for mortgage renewal. This is where it was particularly important for NatWest to help “people plan and think ahead,” especially with the Bank of England raising interest rates, the invasion of Ukraine, and the disruption to the geopolitical environment causing stress.

Alison explains that “calm heads” were necessary to navigate “uncertainty” and provide businesses and families with “the right support.”

Alison Rose on the UK’s Bounceback From Covid-19

Alison considers the way that British businesses performed during the pandemic “astounding.” “I don’t think anyone would’ve predicted they would’ve been so resilient,” she says. “Yes, there was a lot of support put in place to do that. But businesses did think about ‘what was their supply chain like?’ They did think about innovation and technology. They did think about how [to manage] their workforce in a different way.”

Post-Covid, Alison was “very conscious” of the challenges many people faced but emphasised that the banking sector could ease the burden of these challenges.

Different Economies in Different Regions 

NatWest is a regional bank, and most of its business is outside London, where the economies are very different. “There are different concentrations,” Alison says. “We’ve seen great growth, for example, in technology in the north.”

“We have huge teams in Manchester where there’s a real hub of technology and innovation.” Other regions excel in other areas, and so, “there are different communities that need a bit more support and a bit more levelling up.”

Alison also refers to the climate agenda, which she describes as “a real opportunity” to create growth because “it’s going to contribute to new jobs.”

“Actually, the flexibility created from the pandemic, working from home, means you can create and hire people around the country,” she adds. “I think there’s a real opportunity, but I think it’s really important that everybody recognises the different economies and the different trends.”

Alison Rose’s Advice for Entrepreneurs

The best advice Alison can pass on to entrepreneurs is, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” On the other hand, the worst advice she’s received is to “try and be like someone else.” If she could offer her 20-year-old self some guidance it would be to “go for it, believe in yourself, and just be yourself.”

For Alison “being an entrepreneur is taking a risk and having all of the opportunity. This is the most entrepreneurial country there is,” she says, “and the opportunity to start a business and grow and thrive is really exciting. It’s about having an idea and going for it.”

About Alison Rose

Alison Rose changed the face of British banking by becoming the first woman to lead a major bank. When NatWest Group named her chief executive and executive director in 2019, she led the bank through a challenging period in which Covid-19, Brexit, inflation, rising fuel prices, and the war in Ukraine clouded the economic outlook.

Alison became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2023 and is now a senior adviser to the private equity firm Charterhouse. She is also a member of the Board of Trustee Directors of Business in the Community (BITC).