Corporate social responsibility is high on the agenda of UK’s banks.

As part of the 2010 NatWest Customer Charter, NatWest has committed to offering all of their employees a day off for local voluntary work with the aim of providing 15,000 days each year to community volunteering.

Banks need to rebuild trust with the public and giving back to the community makes good business sense and puts a human face on banking.   When Brand Environment was tasked with rebranding NatWest, our challenge was to update the brand retail network in 12 months at minimum cost, by creating customer intimacy at every point of contact. By focusing on ordinary customers and real people rather than faceless corporate entities, we helped to steer NatWest from being an institutional bank to one with a retail approach. NatWest opted to become more ‘high touch’ than ‘high tech’, and their brand experience became warmer, more human and engaging, and more believable.