Q&A: NatWest Group, UK IT Awards finalist
'Our digital transformation has reached a point where both the scale of delivery and the change in how we deliver have reimagined experiences for customers'
"Modern digital experiences cannot be sustained by changing only the customer-facing layer."
The UK IT Industry Awards are a benchmark for excellence in British technology; not because they chase the loudest claims, but because they recognise the teams and individuals whose work is reshaping organisations from the inside.
This year's winners will be announced at a live awards ceremony on Wednesday, 11th November in London. NatWest Group is a finalist in two categories: Digital Transformation Project of the Year and the highly coveted IT Leader of the Year.
Jennifer Scott is head of digital banking technology, C&I at NatWest, and is hoping to take home the IT Leader trophy. We caught up with her to learn more.
Jennifer leads the digital technology platforms and services used by NatWest's commercial and institutional customers. Beginning her career as a software developer, Jennifer has progressed to senior leadership roles across UBS, Deutsche Bank and NatWest. Today, she brings together technology, business strategy, and customer insight to lead large-scale digital, data, and AI transformation.
At NatWest, Jennifer is leading the transformation of Bankline, aiming to modernise essential payment and account-management journeys, connect customers more seamlessly to a wider range of products, and strengthen the engineering foundations that underpin the platform.
What prompted you to enter the UK IT Industry Awards this year?
Over the past year, our digital transformation has reached a point where both the scale of delivery and the change in how we deliver have reimagined experiences for customers.
Bankline is our flagship digital banking experience for business customers, supporting more than 70,000 businesses and 370,000 users. We've been modernising the platform, building our engineering capability, and evolving our releases without compromising the services customers rely on to make over 27 million transactions each month. Entering the awards was an opportunity to recognise the impact we've made.
What would winning this award mean to both your people and your customers or partners?
For our people, it would recognise the ownership, technical discipline and collaboration they bring to work every day. The team has done a great job delivering over the past year. We've evolved our operating model to stay laser-focused on delivering customer outcomes while modernising critical journeys, strengthening our engineering foundations, and increasing our delivery pace.
For customers and partners, I hope it would reinforce our commitment to making business banking simpler, more connected, and easier to use. It would also recognise that modernising a critical banking platform is not just a technology replacement; it is an investment in our ability to respond more quickly and sustainably to the changing needs of UK businesses.
What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?
For me, our proudest contribution to NatWest and our customers has been changing both the digital experience we provide, and the underlying capability used to deliver it. We've modernised journeys, including account management and payments, which customers are now using on a daily basis. We've built a more connected experience, with six new product platforms integrated into Bankline, and we're able to do more for customers as we've modernised our underlying platform, with four times as many releases as pre-transformation.
Importantly, we've been able to achieve this while reducing our environmental footprint, with Bankline's carbon impact reducing by 46% through sustainable infrastructure and engineering practices.
What lessons has the industry learned over the past year, and what changes does it still need to make?
Modern digital experiences cannot be sustained by changing only the customer-facing layer. We need to modernise the underlying architecture, engineering practices and delivery model as well. We've seen that smaller, more frequent releases can increase pace while reducing the risk associated with large changes. We know that innovation, resilience and modernisation go hand in hand, and by designing them together we're better placed to meet our customers' needs now and into the future.
What are the main opportunities over the coming 12 months, and how do you plan to capitalise on them?
We have the opportunity to continue building on modern digital foundations to make business banking more connected, intuitive and responsive. AI and agents will also play different roles: working behind the scenes on routine processes, helping colleagues prepare and serve customers, and increasingly supporting customer interactions.
The important step is connecting these capabilities rather than creating isolated use cases. We can capitalise by bringing together our modernised platform, engineering capability, data, expertise, and resilience. This gives us the foundation to build towards a continually evolving end-to-end customer experience.
The UK IT Industry Awards will take place on 11th November in London. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.