NatWest is making a fresh push into the US market more than a decade after the financial crisis forced it into retreat, taking advantage of loosening rules on UK banks’ overseas operations. The high street bank secured approval from the US Federal Reserve last Thursday to set up a representative office in Connecticut that would “act as a liaison with current and prospective US customers of the bank”. NatWest currently has a US-licensed broker-dealer based in Stamford, Connecticut, that can execute trades for institutional clients such as hedge funds.

But the new representative office will allow the bank to step up its marketing of products to US clients and cultivate relationships with American companies. It marks the first significant attempt by NatWest to crack the US market since the financial crisis and follows a change to ringfencing rules by previous chancellor Rachel Reeves to help make UK banks more competitive. These changes in January 2025 were a key factor in NatWest’s US push, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Rules introduced after the 2008 crisis mandated banks to separate their retail operations from their riskier investment banking activities. They also prohibited ringfenced banks from establishing branches or subsidiaries outside the European Economic Area to insulate them from risks tied to overseas operations. That was reversed as part of a deregulatory push by Reeves to unlock capital for banks.

NatWest has been pursuing a more aggressive growth strategy since its return to private ownership last year, when the UK government finally divested its stake in the lender acquired as part of a £45.5bn bailout. It completed the £2.7bn takeover of wealth manager Evelyn Partners this year as part of an effort to diversify its sources of income. Higher interest rates have buoyed the profits of UK banks, with the big four of Lloyds, NatWest, Barclays and HSBC reporting £29bn in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year.

This has allowed both NatWest and Lloyds to reconsider international expansion in earnest for the first time since the financial crisis.