“Fostering Growth Seamlessly”

Wendy Redshaw is an innovative, dynamic, and energetic leader whose entrepreneurial spirit, collaboration, and inspiring approach to people leadership, combined with her passion for digital disruption, makes her a breath of fresh air as one of only a handful of Senior Female Technologists at the Executive level in the Financial Services Industry. Throughout her career, Wendy has been at the heart of digital innovation, leading numerous strategic and technological functions, bringing industry-leading tech to her organizations - such as Robotics, AI, and Machine Learning - fostering positive digital disruption, encouraging growth mindsets, and inspiring the “art of the possible.”

In her current role as NatWest Group’s Retail Banking Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO), Wendy is responsible for delivery across the breadth of the digital and technology estates for multiple brands in the Group. Her passion for delightful, seamless, and integrated customer journeys is reflected through her technology and execution strategies, the embedding of an innovative, agile culture, and the provision of thought leadership for her multiple teams. Wendy and her teams are responsible for delivering across the full range of the customer experience - from everyday banking, short term borrowing, and home buying and ownership through to financial health and support - and with services provided across Retail Banking’s award-winning mobile app, online banking channels, messaging, websites, account opening, branch technology, cash and coin processing, ATMs, cloud-based call centre technology, mortgage systems, lending systems, robotics, and the digital AI assistant, named Cora! Wendy is also responsible for the delivery of exciting new customer propositions built with FinTechs – recent examples are CoGo, which provides customers access to a real-time carbon footprint tracker based on their spending habits to encourage awareness on climate impacts, and Plan Ahead, which supports families to manage their affairs in the event of ill-health or death.

“As NatWest Group’s Retail Banking Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO), Wendy is responsible for delivery across the breadth of the digital and technology estates for multiple brands in the Group.”

A STEM girl at heart, Wendy graduated with a degree in Mathematics from Imperial College and began her career as a software engineer – majoring in Knowledge Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction. Even in those early days, she was obsessed with the powerful combination of humans, computers, and business value. Her entrepreneurial drive led her to create a start-up, developing a derivatives system adopted by 14 of the top tier banks, and she then went on to be a part of the team that created egg bank, which was one of the UK’s first telephone and internet-only banks.

At the heart of Wendy’s leadership mantra is helping people to flourish. Whether it be speaking at graduate events within the bank, hosting hack-a-thons and home-a-thons, or interacting with members of her team through skip level sessions and fire-side chats, Wendy is passionate about “bringing people on the journey”, setting vision and intent, and empowering those around her, ensuring no one is left behind. Wendy is also incredibly focused on the well-being of her teams and colleagues across the bank. Going above and beyond, she consistently hosts listening sessions, drop-in discussions, personally makes phone calls every morning to colleagues around the globe to check-in, regularly blogs and vlogs, offers insight into challenges and role-models desired behaviours, and collectively encourages sharing that is universally underpinned by warmth, compassion, and human-ness.

A purpose-led strategy puts sustainability at the heart of NatWest Group’s future, and will create more sustainable value for a wider range of stakeholder groups. “Purpose is at the core of all our decision making and is something we aspire to live by every day. For example, NatWest has been running its MoneySense programme for over 25 years – a free financial education resource for schools, parents and young people aged 5-18 to help improve financial confidence. Since MoneySense began the bank has helped more than 9m young people learn about their finances,” says Wendy. “We also look to combine the best digital experience with access to the best people by offering free Financial Health Checks, either face-to-face, by phone, via Video Banking, or Digitally as a confidential service open to customers and non-customers to offers an opportunity to talk through money plans with a Senior Personal Banker.” IE