Democratising Coutts investment capability is a good idea. Calling a product-distribution pathway financial planning would not be.

There is something rather familiar about NatWest’s ambition to grow the number of its retail customers who invest with the bank from around 170,000 to more than 500,000.

I know because, almost 20 years ago, I was sitting on the other side of the table.

From September 2006 until January 2008, I was Head of Savings and Investment Strategy for RBS Group, which included NatWest.

I left before the Global Financial Crisis, the subsequent taxpayer bailout and the Group’s eventual retreat from the bancassurance model.

But one of the strategic questions we were wrestling with then remains remarkably similar to the question NatWest is addressing now:

What happens when a banking customer becomes ready to move from saving to investing?

And who gets to keep the relationship when they do?

An idea whose time may finally have come

Back in 2007, I argued that RBS Group should make greater use of the investment capability sitting inside Coutts.

Coutts already had sophisticated investment expertise serving private clients. My view was simple: why shouldn’t more of that capability be made available across the Group?

The idea went nowhere.

At the time, RBS had a joint venture with Aviva. The prevailing preference was to use the Aviva/Close Brothers proposition rather than leverage the investment capability already sitting within Coutts.

Nearly two decades later, look at NatWest Invest.

Customers can choose between five ready-made portfolios ranging from lower to higher risk, with the investments managed by Coutts investment managers.

In effect, NatWest has done something I thought made sense almost 20 years ago:

take investment capability previously associated with the private-client end of the Group and make a simplified version available to ordinary retail customers.

I think that’s a good thing.

It is a genuine democratisation of investment capability.

But we should be equally clear about what it is — and what it isn’t.

This isn’t financial planning

NatWest has stated an ambition to increase the number of Retail Banking customers investing with it from around 170,000 to more than 500,000.

Its retail proposition is deliberately simple.

Choose an account.

Choose from five ready-made portfolios.

Answer some questions.

Invest.

NatWest itself describes the journey in essentially those terms.

That may be an entirely sensible way to help somebody invest.

But it is not financial planning.

There is an important difference between:

finding an appropriate investment for someone’s money

and

working out what that money is actually for.

Financial planning starts with the person.

What life are you trying to create?

What resources do you already possess?

What claims might there be on that money?

How resilient are your finances?

What is your earning capacity?

What about debt, protection, family responsibilities, housing, pensions, taxation, later-life needs and your human capital?

How much is enough?

And only then:

Does investing some of this money help?

A product pathway starts somewhere else.

It begins with money available for distribution.

That distinction matters.

Enter the Advice Guidance Boundary Review

The timing is not accidental.

The FCA’s Advice Guidance Boundary Review has created a new framework through which authorised firms can provide targeted support to groups of consumers sharing common characteristics.

The new regime went live on 6 April 2026. The FCA says banks, pension providers and other authorised firms can use it to make suggestions designed for groups of consumers with common characteristics to help them make pensions and investment decisions.

This potentially changes the economics of retail financial distribution enormously.

Traditional regulated advice is expensive.

But imagine a bank being able to identify thousands of customers who exhibit broadly similar characteristics:

• significant cash holdings;
• money accumulating beyond likely short-term requirements;
• no investments;
• sufficient financial resilience;
• an appropriate time horizon.

Instead of waiting for those people individually to seek an adviser, the institution can potentially identify the cohort and help nudge appropriate customers towards investing.

The pathway becomes:

Saver → targeted support → risk assessment → NatWest Invest → one of five Coutts-managed portfolios.

That is potentially extremely scalable.

But notice what has happened.

The advice gap hasn’t necessarily been filled with financial planning.

It has been filled with a more efficient bridge between cash and investment products.

The Government wants Britain investing

There is a wider public-policy story here too.

The Government has been explicit about wanting to increase retail investment.

In her July 2025 Mansion House speech, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she was introducing measures to boost retail investment, while the Government’s Leeds Reforms described supporting savers to invest as part of rewiring the financial system to generate economic growth.

There is a reasonable argument behind this.

Britain has substantial household savings sitting in cash.

Long-term investment can provide people with opportunities for capital growth while supplying capital to productive enterprises.

So three interests potentially converge.

The Government wants more investment and economic growth.

The bank wants deeper customer relationships and a greater share of customers’ financial assets.

The customer may benefit from putting genuinely long-term capital to productive use rather than leaving everything in cash.

Nothing about that alignment is inherently sinister.

But nor should we pretend those interests are identical.

Follow the economics

Imagine a NatWest customer with £100,000 sitting on deposit.

From the customer’s perspective, this is savings.

From the bank’s perspective, it is also part of a customer relationship that could potentially leave.

The customer could transfer £50,000 tomorrow to Vanguard, AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown or another investment provider.

At that moment NatWest hasn’t simply lost deposits.

Another institution has acquired part of the customer’s financial relationship.

NatWest Invest provides a defensive as well as an offensive response.

Keep the savings customer.

Convert part of the relationship into an investment relationship.

Increase product holdings.

Generate investment-related revenue.

And reduce the likelihood that the customer’s growing wealth migrates elsewhere.

NatWest currently states maximum NatWest Invest charges of 0.15% for the platform and 0.40% for the fund, giving a maximum combined ongoing charge of 0.55%.

This suggests a useful way of understanding the strategy:

Deposit-defence distribution

The institution isn’t merely competing to attract new investment assets.

It is trying to prevent existing customer wealth from escaping its ecosystem when cash savers become investors.

That is perfectly rational commercial behaviour.

But understanding the incentive helps us understand the proposition.

Bancassurance didn’t disappear. It evolved.

Perhaps the more interesting observation is historical.

The old bancassurance model looked something like this:

Bank customer → branch → adviser → needs analysis → limited or proprietary product range.

It was expensive.

Human advisers had to be recruited, trained, managed, supervised and paid.

Branches cost money.

Compliance cost money.

And distribution capacity was constrained by the number of advisers available.

Now consider the emerging model:

Customer data → behavioural segmentation → digital engagement → targeted support/advice → simplified product range → digital platform.

That looks rather different technologically.

Strategically, however, it is strikingly familiar.

The bank still wants to convert its enormous distribution advantage into greater participation in investment products.

It has simply replaced much of the expensive human distribution infrastructure with data, digital journeys and regulatory technology.

We might call this:

Bancassurance 2.0

From branch distribution to behavioural distribution.

And arguably it is considerably more powerful than its predecessor.

Why Coutts makes this particularly interesting

This is where I find myself unusually positive about the NatWest proposition.

If a large bank is going to offer simplified investment solutions to ordinary customers, making the investment expertise of Coutts available across the Group makes considerable strategic sense.

Coutts itself continues to offer managed funds across different risk appetites, while NatWest’s five Personal Portfolio Funds are managed by Coutts investment managers.

So there is something genuinely attractive happening here.

Expertise historically associated with wealthy private clients is being made accessible at retail scale.

That is democratisation.

And I wish we’d done more of it when I suggested the idea in 2007.

But democratising investment management is not the same thing as democratising financial planning.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as these propositions scale.

500,000 investors. But what is the outcome?

Organisations reveal a great deal through what they measure.

NatWest’s target is not:

500,000 customers with a financial plan.

It isn’t:

500,000 customers who understand their finances better.

And it isn’t:

500,000 customers who have become more capable of making financial decisions independently.

The target is more than:

500,000 retail customers investing with NatWest.

That’s an investment-distribution KPI.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

The problem begins only when our industry starts confusing product participation with financial wellbeing.

Because somebody can own an investment fund without having a plan.

They can have an ISA without knowing what enough looks like.

They can have an appropriately risk-rated portfolio while making poor decisions everywhere else in their financial life.

And they can become a more profitable customer without becoming a more capable human being.

The real gap isn’t merely an advice gap

For years the financial-services industry has talked about Britain’s advice gap.

Increasingly, I think that language sends us looking for the wrong solution.

If we define the problem as insufficient access to regulated advice, the obvious answer is to make advice and product distribution cheaper.

AI.

Automation.

Targeted support.

Simplified advice.

Digital investing.

All useful.

But suppose the deeper problem is something else.

Suppose Britain has a financial capability gap.

Then the objective changes.

Instead of asking:

How can we get more people into investments?

we ask:

How can we help more people understand, choose and act intelligently for themselves?

That is a very different design problem.

From democratising investments to democratising capability

I welcome what NatWest is doing with Coutts.

Indeed, part of me looks at it and thinks:

Finally.

An idea that looked obvious to me in 2007 has become practical in a completely different technological and regulatory environment.

But there is another democratisation project still waiting to happen.

Coutts once gave wealthy people access to capabilities unavailable to most citizens.

Technology can now democratise investment management.

AI can go considerably further.

It can democratise cognitive capability.

It can help ordinary people understand their finances.

Model choices.

Explore trade-offs.

Interrogate products.

Challenge institutions.

Understand risk.

Connect money with life.

And arrive at professional conversations better informed rather than more dependent.

That is the opportunity we are building towards at the Academy of Life Planning.

Investment management can be democratised.

Financial planning can be democratised.

And ultimately, so can the capability to make good financial decisions.

The next revolution in financial services shouldn’t simply be about giving everybody access to the products once reserved for wealthy people.

It should be about giving everybody access to something more valuable:

the capability once reserved for the people advising them.

That’s the difference between democratising products and restoring human agency.

Agency before advice.