NatWest is unveiling a new enterprise team for Wales along with enhanced support for SMEs and entrepreneurs.
Blessing Mutamba and Evan Williams join the bank as Entrepreneur Acceleration Managers and will give businesses the specialist guidance they need through expertise, coaching and networks relevant to each business’ location and sector.
They will work alongside Gemma Casey, NatWest’s Ecosystem Manager for Wales, as well as Local Enterprise Managers Lee Morgan and Julia Perry, who offer tailored support to businesses across Wales as they start up and grow.
The move comes as NatWest looks to unlock business potential outside of London. It is investing £6bn in the growth of SMEs, with £4bn of this outside of the UK capital in regions including across the whole of Wales.
NatWest also employs the largest dedicated business banking team in Wales with over 30 relationship managers and directors helping businesses grow. It is also the only bank to operate a bilingual call centre, based in Gwynedd.
The bank has also launched a revised version of its flagship NatWest Accelerator programme, due to start at the end of June.
The fully-funded programme is designed to support business owners to scale their businesses to the next level, and for the first time features four programmes specialising in:
- High growth.
- Climate.
- Purpose-led.
- Fintech.
Gemma said: “Supporting enterprise is a huge part of our responsibility and we have committed to helping 35,000 UK entrepreneurs through our enterprise programmes in 2021. The past year has been unbelievably tough for so many sectors, and even as we start to emerge from the pandemic we know that the economic and social impacts will be considerable and long lasting. We are determined to remove barriers to enterprise and support businesses at every stage of their life cycle.
“Our four new specialist Accelerators will help us to provide tailored support to businesses in some key areas of the Welsh economy, as well as to help high growth enterprises to realise their ambitions and move to the next stage. Alongside this is digital, one-demand support available to anyone, no matter what stage they are at in their business journey, via our Business Builder platform.
“And our enterprise team will be working closely with organisations such as Chwarae Teg and Cynnal Cymru – Sustain Wales to ensure that we are helping more women to start and grow in business, and supporting businesses to become more sustainable and environmentally-aware.”
Applications are open for the NatWest Accelerator programme until June 11.
