NatWest has appointed Georgina Bulkeley as the new chief operating officer of its personal banking division.

Moving from the role of strategy and innovation director, which she has held since 2018, Bulkeley will take up the newly-created role in September as part of the operating model shake-up launched by Alison Rose, who took over as chief executive of the group in November 2019.

Bulkeley will continue to lead on strategy and innovation, while also assuming responsibility for commercial planning and pricing for personal banking products across the business.

Additionally, she will oversee closer integration of innovation and new product development with NatWest’s purpose-led agenda, launched in February, which aims to areas of the business within the overall strategy of the new operating model.

In her current role, Bulkeley has led the bank’s adoption and deployment of technology solutions to simplify the customer experience in digital channels and work with third-parties, leading to NatWest becoming the first bank in the UK to pilot biometric cards and launching voice banking in partnership with Google.

Les Matheson, chief executive for personal banking at NatWest, said: “Georgina is the ideal person to help us grow our business in a sustainable, purpose-led way through delivering against our strategic goals - her expanded role will ensure an even greater level of alignment between our innovation pipeline and the resources we allocate to them.”

Bulkeley has worked across the group for over 12 years in a range of strategy, finance and risk-based roles. Prior to this, she worked for Goldman Sachs International and Standard Life Aberdeen.

“My passion is getting our innovation into the hands of customers and improving their financial health," she commented. "I’m really pleased to be working across a wider remit to help make that happen even more quickly.”

She will be the morning keynote speaker at FStech's first virtual conference on the Future of FinTech this Thursday, 20 August, at 9am.

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