NatWest to trial voice spending tool on its own in-house AI models

NatWest Group said on 25 September 2026 that it will trial a voice-and-text tool for talking through your spending, starting with Royal Bank of Scotland customers and running on what the bank calls its own proprietary small language model. In the same announcement it said it had launched a Fraud Triage Agent inside Cora, its digital assistant.

The release is headlined "NatWest Group first to unveil next generation of AI tools". That "first" is NatWest's own claim, and we have not verified it.

The Spending Insights trial

NatWest says it is "set to trial an industry-first fully generative audio-visual Spending Insights tool, becoming the first bank to test a real time voice-to-voice conversational AI experience". The release does not say which set of banks that "first" covers or how it was checked.

What the bank says the tool does:

• It will be "Initially trialled through Royal Bank of Scotland", and customers will be able to talk about their finances "using voice or text".
• It "can respond dynamically to follow-up questions, interruptions, and changes in topic".
• It "will turn complex transaction data into clear, personalised and interactive insights and graphs, to help customers understand their money and identify potential savings."

NatWest's AI Adoption Report, published alongside the release, says the tool is "about to be tested with Royal Bank of Scotland customers before being rolled out more widely across the bank", and that it is "Available through the mobile app". Neither document gives a start date for the trial or says how many customers will take part.

The model

According to the release, the tool was "Developed by NatWest’s Chief AI Research Office" and "is powered by NatWest’s proprietary Small Language Model". Elsewhere the same release uses the plural, "the bank’s proprietary Small Language Models". The report says the bank "is developing its own small language models, specialised for banking use cases, and investing in GPUs".

The report's case study also says the tool is "powered by the bank's own small language models". NatWest does not give the model's size, what it was trained on, or whether it is built on an existing open model.

The fraud agent

NatWest says customers "concerned about a suspicious credit card transaction can explain what happened and receive guidance to the most appropriate fraud, scam or dispute team or service, instead of categorising the issue themselves." The report says the agent is "now live in Cora for credit card customers across all of NatWest’s brands". It also says the agent has "handled almost 19,000 customer conversations" since "its launch in August". The release gives the same count as "nearly 19,000".

The research figure

The release says "57% of customers say they are using AI much more than six months ago". The report words the same figure two other ways: "57% using AI tools more than they were six months ago", and "their use of AI had grown rapidly in the previous six months". Neither document prints the exact survey question.

According to the report's methodology, the retail survey "was conducted online in July 2026 among 4,077 UK adults aged 18 or over with a bank account", including "2,422 NatWest Group customers and a separate nationally representative sample of 1,853 UK consumers", and "was conducted by Freemavens". Those two sub-samples add up to 4,275, not 4,077, and the report does not explain the difference. Both the release and the report's introduction put the benchmark sample at 1,800.

Other figures from the same survey, according to the release:

• 40% use AI tools most days or daily, and 22% use AI platforms for financial information and advice.
• 81% say access to a real person is the most important factor in building trust in AI in financial services.
• 77% want clarity about how their data is handled, and 75% say strong oversight by independent regulators is important.

Safeguards

The release says NatWest's use of AI "is governed by its Artificial Intelligence & Data Ethics Code of Conduct". The report says the bank is working with the Financial Conduct Authority, "including the FCA’s AI Live Testing initiative". It does not say whether either new tool is part of that work.

What the executives said

Dr Maja Pantic, Chief AI Research Officer, NatWest Group: "Success will not be determined by who adopts AI fastest, but by who adopts it most thoughtfully." She also said: "We're moving beyond simple written question and answer interactions towards more natural, audio-visual conversations that allow customers to engage with complex information in a way that feels intuitive and interactive."

Solange Chamberlain, Retail CEO, NatWest Group: "Customers are already using AI as part of their everyday lives, and that is raising expectations of what great banking should feel like."

Why it matters

On our reading, the new detail here is less the chat feature than NatWest's statement that it plans to run customer-facing banking conversations on a model it says it built in-house, starting with a trial. NatWest has published nothing about that model beyond who built it and what it is for, so outsiders cannot yet assess it, and the trial has no stated start date or size. According to the bank's own survey, 81% of its customers say access to a real person is the most important factor in trusting AI in financial services.

For background on what AI tools are and are not good for with money, see our guide: Should you take financial advice from an AI?