NatWest Group has consolidated its creative and media planning and buying requirements with Interpublic.  The Aperto Partnership and Observatory International supported NatWest on the review.

IPG went head-to-head with WPP in the final stages of the pitch process. Publicis and Dentsu were also involved at earlier points in the process, which has been running for most of this year.

The UK bank described its decision to appoint a “new holding company partner” as a “strategic move [that] will transform the bank’s multiple agency arrangements to a new, future-fit single integrated agency model”.

IPG’s Initiative has been the incumbent on NatWest’s media since 2021 and WPP’s T&P has been the incumbent on creative since 2019.  Marg Jobling, the chief marketing officer at NatWest, said: “We are very proud of the work we have delivered with our partners, T&P and Initiative, but we believe now is the right time to shift gears to a future-ready agency model that will help deliver on our growth ambitions.”

She went on: “In today’s fast-moving consumer and media landscape, we want to build stronger, more differentiated brands and do this in a way that drives simplicity and gets us closer to the customer. An integrated agency model will help us do just that, combining creative, media, data and technology to better reach our customers with more personalised and contextualised marketing.”

NatWest’s account is thought to be worth over £40m in annual billings. Above-the-line spend was £39m in 2024, according to data from COMvergence.

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