NatWest Group Plc (LON: NWG) Stock Near Record Highs After BoE Stress Test – Buybacks, Dividends and 2026 Forecasts (3 December 2025)

As of the close on 3 December 2025, NatWest Group Plc’s London‑listed shares finished at around 638p, leaving the stock within touching distance of a new 52‑week high of 641.2p and up about 57% over the past year. The move caps a remarkable rerating driven by record profitability, aggressive share buybacks, stronger dividends and, this week, a clean pass in the Bank of England’s 2025 stress test alongside softer capital rules for UK banks. ^[1]

For investors hunting for up‑to‑date insight on NatWest Group stock, here’s what has changed up to 3 December 2025 – and how analysts now see 2026.

NatWest Group share price today (3 December 2025)

On the London Stock Exchange, NatWest Group plc (ticker NWG) closed the session with: ^[2]

Sell / Bid: 638.0p
Buy / Offer: 638.4p
Previous close: 640.2p
Intraday high / low: 640.8p / 637.8p
52‑week range: 369.0p – 641.2p
Market capitalisation: ~£51.1 billion
Trailing P/E ratio: ~12.2x
Trailing dividend yield: ~3.4%

Performance has been powerful:

1‑year total price gain: ~57.5%
5‑year gain: ~258% (from deeply discounted post‑crisis levels). ^[3]

On the NYSE, the US‑listed ADR (ticker NWG) recently traded around $16.7, close to a 12‑month high of $16.82, with a trailing P/E of roughly 9.7x and a market cap near $67 billion (FX and data methodology explain the difference versus the London figures). ^[4]

In other words, the stock has already rerated hard – NatWest is no longer priced like a permanently impaired “crisis bank.”

Stress test pass and softer capital rules lift UK bank sentiment

The biggest fresh catalyst for NatWest this week is the combination of:

A clean pass in the Bank of England’s 2025 stress test, and
A BoE decision to reduce sector‑wide capital requirements.

BoE 2025 stress test: comfortable headroom

In a 2 December filing summarising the stress test, NatWest reported that under the BoE’s “severe but plausible” downturn scenario: ^[5]

The Group’s low‑point CET1 ratio would fall to 11.1% (from 13.6% at year‑end 2024).
The low‑point Tier 1 leverage ratio would be 4.7% (vs 5.0% actual).
Both figures remained well above the BoE’s stressed minimum thresholds.
Crucially, no strategic management actions (like cutting dividends or issuing equity) would have been required.

CFO Katie Murray framed the results as evidence of “the strength of NatWest Group’s balance sheet” and of its ability to continue “strong distributions for shareholders” while supporting the real economy. ^[6]

BoE eases capital requirements

Separately, on 2 December the Bank of England announced its first reduction in bank capital requirements since the global financial crisis, trimming the Tier 1 capital benchmark from 14% to 13% to encourage lending and economic growth. All seven major UK banks – including NatWest – passed the stress tests, and their shares rose between 1% and 1.5% on the day. ^[7]

For NatWest, the combination of:

Strong stress‑test headroom, and
Slightly lighter regulatory capital demands

supports the bank’s argument that it can keep returning capital via dividends and buybacks without jeopardising resilience.

Q3 2025 earnings: record profitability and upgraded guidance

The stress‑test headlines come on top of already strong fundamentals.

Q3 2025: RoTE above 20%, margins still expanding

NatWest’s Q3 2025 results, published in October, showed: ^[8]

Total income (YTD, ex notable items): £12.1bn, up ~12.5% year‑on‑year.
Net interest margin (NIM): 2.37% in Q3 (up 9 bps vs Q2 and 19 bps vs Q3 2024).
Return on Tangible Equity (RoTE):
- 19.5% year‑to‑date,
- 22.3% in Q3 alone.
Profit attributable to ordinary shareholders (YTD): £4.09bn, up ~25% vs 2024.
CET1 ratio: 14.2%, up 60 bps vs December 2024, even after capital distributions.

The Q3 earnings call highlighted robust net interest income, disciplined costs (cost‑income ratio below 48%) and still‑benign credit impairments, with loan loss charges running at only 17 bps of average loans. ^[9]

2025 guidance: income and returns pushed higher

Management has upgraded 2025 guidance during the year, now expecting: ^[10]

Income (ex notable items): around £16.3bn for 2025.
RoTE:>18% for the full year, even after higher capital requirements and buybacks.

That level of profitability is enviable for a large, mostly domestic UK retail and commercial bank – and goes a long way to justifying a rerating away from the “sub‑book value” multiples NatWest traded on only a couple of years ago.

Dividends, buybacks and total shareholder return

If earnings are the engine, capital returns are the exhaust plume investors care about.

Ordinary dividends: 9.5p interim and a rising trend

In July, NatWest announced an interim dividend of 9.5p per share for 2025, worth about £768m, paid on 12 September. ^[11]

Recent dividend history from public data providers shows: ^[12]

Final 2024 dividend: 15.5p
Interim 2025 dividend: 9.5p

Total ordinary dividends of 21.5p for 2024 equate to a historical yield of ~5.3% on last year’s average share price, while the current trailing yield on the 2025 interim plus the previous final is about 3.4% at today’s 638p share price.

Management has also signalled that from 2025 onwards it aims to raise the ordinary dividend payout ratio from ~40% of earnings towards ~50%, with surplus capital returned via buybacks where appropriate. TS2 Tech+1

£750m buyback and daily share repurchases

Alongside the interim dividend, NatWest launched a £750m on‑market buyback programme in the second half of 2025. ^[13]

Recent filings show how actively that programme is being executed:

On 1 December 2025, the bank repurchased 2,432,493 ordinary shares on the LSE at prices between 626.8p and 634.8p, with a volume‑weighted average price of 631.56p. ^[14]
A separate update confirmed the purchase of 834,401 shares as part of the programme, leaving NatWest with about 230.2m shares in treasury and roughly 8.01bn shares in issue. ^[15]

At current prices and market cap, a £750m buyback in 2025 retires around 1.5% of the share count, on top of ordinary dividends – implying a high single‑digit to low double‑digit “total shareholder yield” when combined with cash payouts, depending on where the buyback runs in 2026. TS2 Tech+1

Strategy update: from full privatisation to fintech deals

2025 has also transformed the strategic backdrop for NatWest’s equity story.

Government finally exits: no more state overhang

On 30 May 2025, HM Treasury completed the final disposal of its remaining stake in NatWest Group, ending nearly 17 years of partial public ownership following the 2008–09 bailout. ^[16]

Government data show that between 2015 and 2025 the state raised roughly £24.8bn in sale proceeds plus about £4.9bn of dividends and various fee income. While that still falls short of the original bailout cost, it removes a persistent “overhang” risk for shareholders and allows NatWest to operate as a fully private bank again for the first time since the financial crisis. ^[17]

Non‑core asset sale: Cushon stake on the block

NatWest is also tidying up its portfolio. Multiple reports in late November and early December confirm the bank is in exclusive talks to sell its 85% stake in workplace pension provider Cushon to Willis Towers Watson: ^[18]

The deal could value Cushon at more than £150m, compared with the ~£144m NatWest reportedly paid in 2023.
Final terms are not yet agreed and the transaction could still fall through.

The move is widely seen as a non‑core disposal, consistent with CEO Paul Thwaite’s plan to simplify the group and recycle capital from smaller fintech and wealth holdings back into core UK lending and deposit franchises. TS2 Tech+1

Fintech partnership: minority stake in Bourn

On the growth side, NatWest is leaning into embedded finance for SMEs. Sky News and specialist fintech outlets report that the bank is acquiring a minority stake in Bourn, a London‑based start‑up that offers secured working‑capital finance to small businesses via digital platforms. ^[19]

While financially small, the Bourn investment underlines two themes:

A push to innovate in SME and digital lending, and
A strategy of partnering with or taking stakes in focused fintechs rather than trying to build everything in‑house. TS2 Tech+1

Social loan fund and ESG positioning

NatWest has also announced a £500m social loan fund aimed at supporting social housing, with the first £100m tranche going to housing association VIVID to build around 450 additional social rent homes over a 10‑year term. TS2 Tech

These kinds of transactions help bolster NatWest’s ESG credentials while generating secured lending assets that can be relatively capital‑efficient.

NatWest stock forecasts and analyst ratings

With the shares near their post‑crisis highs, the obvious question is how much upside is left.

UK‑listed shares: “Buy” consensus with modest upside

For the London‑listed NWG shares, aggregated broker data show a broadly constructive but not euphoric picture: ^[20]

MarketBeat (LON: NWG):
- Consensus rating: “Moderate Buy” based on recent analyst notes.
- Average 12‑month price target: around 660p.
- Target range: 550p – 765p.
TradingView analyst aggregate:
- Overall rating: “Buy” based on ~19 recent recommendations.
- 1‑year price target: ~669p, with a similar 550p–765p range.

From today’s ~638p price, that implies low‑single‑digit capital upside – roughly 3–5% – plus whatever dividend income investors receive. Some individual houses are more bullish (JPMorgan reportedly at 700p, RBC as high as 725p), but the median view is that the big rerating has already happened. TS2 Tech+1

TipRanks’ auto‑generated updates note that the most recent analyst rating on the LSE line carried a £7.65 (765p) price target and a “Buy” stance, while its AI “Spark” model labels the stock “Outperform” with supportive technical signals. ^[21]

US ADR (NYSE: NWG): more mixed views

On the US ADR, the analyst mix looks a bit more cautious. MarketBeat’s latest institutional‑holding note summarises the NYSE‑tracked consensus as: ^[22]

One Strong Buy,
Two Buy,
Two Sell,
Averaging to an overall “Hold” rating.

Zacks, however, recently upgraded NatWest to “Strong Buy” on its income‑stock screens, with a $17.10 price target, implying roughly 2–3% upside from recent ADR prices. ^[23]

Viewed together, the patterns are consistent:

Most traditional broker models see modest further upside from current levels,
But the easy money from deep value re‑rating has likely already been made. TS2 Tech

Valuation: what is priced into NWG shares?

At ~638p, NatWest trades at: ^[24]

About 12x trailing earnings, and
Roughly 1.8x tangible net asset value (TNAV), using Q3 2025 TNAV per share of 362p.

Given a 2025 RoTE guided at >18%, that’s not an obviously stretched multiple, but it’s also far from the 0.5–0.7x book value levels that prevailed when the government still owned a big stake and conduct risks loomed large. ^[25]

On the income side, the trailing dividend yield of around 3.4% could rise into the high‑3% to mid‑4% range if forecasts of higher ordinary payouts and continuing buybacks prove accurate. Total shareholder yield (dividends plus buybacks) is widely seen as high single‑digit, potentially touching double digits in some scenarios. TS2 Tech+1

In short:

NatWest is no longer “cheap on any metric,”
But it still offers a solid combination of profitability, capital strength and cash returns at what many consider a reasonable price, assuming earnings don’t retrace sharply.

Macro backdrop: rates, inflation and UK credit conditions

NatWest’s fortunes are tightly linked to the UK macro environment.

Key macro points as of early December 2025: ^[26]

The Bank of England Bank Rate sits at 4.0%, after a close 5–4 Monetary Policy Committee vote in November to hold rather than cut to 3.75%.
CPI inflation has eased to about 3.6% year‑on‑year (October data), still above the 2% target but trending lower.
UK house prices rose 0.3% month‑on‑month in November, with annual growth slowing to 1.8%, suggesting a muted but stabilising housing market rather than a crash.

Higher‑for‑longer rates have so far been good for NatWest’s net interest margin, but as markets increasingly price in BoE rate cuts in 2026, analysts expect:

Some margin compression as deposit pricing normalises, and
Potentially slower loan growth, especially in mortgages and consumer credit. TS2 Tech+1

So far, though, credit quality remains benign, with modest impairment charges and stable arrears across key portfolios. ^[27]

Institutional interest: American Century and others add exposure

Fresh 13F filings show continued institutional appetite for NatWest equity. An early‑December MarketBeat summary highlights that American Century Companies Inc.: ^[28]

Increased its NatWest stake by 21% in Q2 2025,
Adding 268,787 shares to reach 1.55m shares in total,
Valued at roughly $21.9m at the quarter‑end.

Several smaller US institutions have also been gradually adding to positions, with hedge funds and RIAs together holding just over 1.2% of the ADR free float – still a relatively modest figure, leaving room for further international ownership growth if the story continues to improve. ^[29]

Key risks for NatWest Group investors

Despite the strong narrative, there are clear risk factors that could shape the next phase of the share‑price story: TS2 Tech+2investors.natwestgroup.com+2

Margin compression and rate cuts
- Faster‑than‑expected BoE easing could pressure NatWest’s 2.37% NIM and challenge its ability to sustain RoTE in the high‑teens.
UK economic and credit risk
- A weaker labour market, higher defaults in commercial real estate or SMEs, or a sharper housing slowdown could drive higher impairments from today’s very benign levels.
Regulatory and political risk
- While the latest budget avoided new bank‑specific taxes, UK politics remains sensitive to bank profits and conduct issues. Future debates on bank levies, deposit‑rate regulation or consumer redress (e.g., in motor finance) could hit returns. ^[30]
Operational and conduct risk
- Big banks carry persistent exposure to IT outages, cyber attacks and conduct fines. NatWest is still rebuilding reputational capital after the 2023 Coutts “debanking” controversy, even though that saga has now largely been resolved. TS2 Tech
Single‑market concentration
- NatWest is heavily skewed to the UK, which amplifies domestic macro and regulatory shocks compared with more geographically diversified peers. ^[31]

For prospective investors, the question is whether the current valuation appropriately discounts these risks against the bank’s elevated profitability and capital return profile.

Conclusion: a very different NatWest than a decade ago

As of 3 December 2025, NatWest Group looks dramatically different from the semi‑nationalised, litigation‑scarred institution of the 2010s:

The UK government is out of the shareholder register. ^[32]
The bank is delivering RoTE north of 20%, with strong capital ratios and ample liquidity. ^[33]
Shareholders are collecting a mix of rising ordinary dividends and sizeable buybacks. ^[34]
And the stock now trades near record post‑crisis highs, with analysts projecting modest further price upside plus mid‑single‑digit income yields if current forecasts hold. ^[35]

The flip side is that NatWest is no longer a simple “deep value” bet. Future returns are likely to depend on:

How smoothly the UK rate‑cut cycle unfolds,
Whether credit quality stays robust in a lukewarm economy, and
Management’s ability to keep capital returns high without stumbling on regulation or conduct. TS2 Tech+2Reuters+2

For now, the market seems to be treating NatWest less as a distressed turnaround and more as a highly profitable, income‑oriented UK bank where the long‑term story is about disciplined execution rather than dramatic rescue – a notable evolution in less than ten years.