[14] The creation of the modern bank was announced in 1968 and commenced trading on 1 January 1970 after the statutory process of integration had been completed in 1969.

National Westminster Home Loans was established in 1980 and other initiatives included the launch of the Piggy Account for children in 1983, the Credit Zone, a flexible overdraft facility on which customers only pay interest (now commonplace, this so-called pink debt was innovative when launched) and the development of the Mondex electronic purse (later sold to MasterCard Worldwide) in 1990.

At a height of 600 feet (183 m) it was the tallest building in the UK until the topping-out of Canary Wharf Tower 10 years later;[23] its footprint loosely approximating the bank's logo when viewed from the air,[24] although the architect claimed the similarity was coincidence.

[25] Also worthy of note is National Westminster House (since renamed as 103 Colmore Row) in Birmingham: the building was sold to British Land in 2007[26] and demolished in 2015.

[27] The Department of Trade and Industry report on the affair was critical of the bank's management and resulted in the resignation of several members of the board, including then-chairman Lord Boardman.

Investor and shareholder confidence was so badly shaken that the Bank of England had to instruct the board of directors to resist calls for the resignation of its most senior executives in an effort to draw a line under the affair.

In 1999, the chairman, Lord Alexander of Weedon, announced a merger with Legal & General in a friendly £10.7 billion deal, the first between a bank and an insurance company in UK history.

[41] The outcome of this bitter struggle set the tone for a round of consolidation in the financial sector as it prepared for a new age of fierce global competition.

In 2008, it was announced that HM Government would take a stake of up to 58% in the Royal Bank of Scotland in a move aimed at recapitalising the group.

[44] As a consequence of the mismanagement that necessitated this rescue, the chief executive, Fred Goodwin (who secured the takeover of NatWest), offered his resignation, which was duly accepted.

[50] In August 2016, RBS cancelled its plan to spin off Williams & Glyn as a separate business, stating that the new bank could not survive independently.

[51] In February 2017, HM Treasury and the European Commission reached a provisional agreement in which RBS would be able to retain the Williams & Glyn assets in return for investing £750 million into a fund aimed at increasing SME lending by challenger banks and for RBS agreeing to allow SME customers of challenger banks to use its branch network for cash and cheque handling.

Ownership of National Westminster Home Loans was passed to the holding company in 2005;[62] however, the mortgage portfolio and related funding were also transferred back to NatWest in 2012.

[68] The following have served as chairmen of National Westminster Bank: The office is currently held ex officio by the chair of NatWest Group.

[77] Esme Loans commenced trading on 17 February 2017, after being founded out of the bank's new product development programme NatWest Innovation Cell by Richard Kerton, Veronika Lovett, and Lucy Hasson.

[78] The bank operates "mobile branches" using converted vans to serve rural areas around St Austell, Swansea, Carlisle, Devon and North Wales.

[citation needed] In 2006, the then RBS Group undertook the first trial of PayPass contactless debit and credit cards in Europe.

[81] In 2019, a NatWest pilot project was the first in the UK to trial debit cards containing fingerprint authentication technology developed by Dutch company, Gemalto.

[83] The bank established credit and debit card payment handling company Streamline in 1989, which was merged into Worldpay Group in 2009.

[89] National Westminster Bank use the following series of six digit sorting codes formatted into three pairs separated by hyphens: International Bank Account Numbers take the form GBxx NWBK ssss ssaa aaaa aa, where x refers to two check digits, s to the branch sort code and a to the individual account number.

Bó, a standalone digital banking app with the aim of helping people save more money was launched in November 2019[90] and discontinued in May 2020.

[106] The cuts came at a time when the row over the legality of unauthorised borrowing, estimated to earn current account providers about £2.6 billion a year, had reached the House of Lords.

[107] In late June 2012, the group suffered a major computer malfunction,[108] resulting in some customers' account balances not updating correctly.

[111] As a result of the error, RBS and NatWest announced that over 1,200 of their busiest branches would extend their hours throughout the week, including the bank's first Sunday opening, to enable the customers affected to access cash.

[113] Some customers also reported problems with direct debits and standing orders being returned unpaid due to their account balances not updating correctly.

[114] In December 2013, a similar computer failure led to a number of customers being unable to use NatWest card services to pay for goods.

[115] On 20 March 2017, the British paper The Guardian reported that hundreds of banks had helped launder KGB-related funds out of Russia, as uncovered by an investigation named Global Laundromat.

FCA lawyers stated that large volumes of cash were deposited in black bin bags, and that the quantity of notes failed to fit within the branch vaults.

[117] In a statement, a spokesman for the Financial Conduct Authority said "'NatWest is responsible for a catalogue of failures in the way it monitored and scrutinised transactions that were self-evidently suspicious.

From 1981 until 2000, the bank was the title sponsor of English domestic cricket's main limited overs knockout tournament, which was known as the NatWest Trophy during that period.