Our People

Stuart Foster

Stuart is Managing Director of Financial Institutions (FI), one of the four businesses that make up the  Commercial and Institutional Franchise. In his current role, Stuart brings together FI customers across three customer sectors (Non-Bank FI, Funds and Banks & SSAs (Supranationals, Sovereigns & Agencies)) within the NatWest Group under one single, focused business. Stuart’s role as MD of FI is to drive the customer strategy and deliver the whole bank to our institutional customers.

Stuart is a member of the Commercial & Institutional ExCo and Risk committees.

His previous role was Managing Director for Institutional Banking and Depositary Services at RBS International. This also included NatWest Trustee and Depositary Services, the largest fully independent trustee and depositary provider in the UK. Stuart was also a member of the Exec Committee of RBS International.

James Waud

James Waud is Managing Director, Head of Banks & Sovereigns, Supranationals & Agencies. James has been at NatWest for nine years, having originally joined as Global Head of Subsidiary Banking. 

James previously spent 18 years at J.P. Morgan, initially through the Global Management Training Programme in New York, followed by two years in Paris covering French Corporate clients. He then returned to London and assumed a variety of sales leadership roles including running UK Corporate, US and Asia Multinational Coverage teams. James's last role at J.P. Morgan was as Corporate Sales Executive, Northern Europe.

Monika Tarr

Monika is MD Banks Coverage, and  leads our Banks Coverage team for Americas and Middle East across products and across NWG. Monika previously lead the Global banks team for the commercial bank. Previously, she headed up Emerging Markets and Southern Europe following her role in Global Transaction Banking Sales for Latin America. Monika has previously held roles as a Director in Consulting for Banks at Deloitte, Funding at RBS Treasury and in Origination and  Syndicate for SSAs and later for Financial Institutions Debt Capital Markets.

Adam Hanke

Adam is MD Banks Coverage Transaction Banking and leads the newly formed Banks Coverage Transaction Banking business, which consolidates the ownership of all of our Transaction Banking relationships with Banks clients globally into one team.  Adam has been with NatWest for 9 years, and has held various leadership roles covering a number of core geographies, most recently in UK and Europe, and had responsibility of ownership across critical strategic Transaction Banking initiatives. 

Scott Christie

Scott is a Director within Americas Banks Coverage, Financial Institutions. He now has responsibility for delivering ‘One Bank’ solutions to our clients and is currently on secondment with NWM US to provide local coverage and to deliver NatWest’s strategic commercial objectives with FIs that are present in the Americas (USA, Canada, LatAm). 

Scott has seven years' experience managing Banks relationships and has built a strong client network across mature and emerging markets in the FI sector.

Prior to his time in FI, he also supported Large Corporate (FTSE 100) UK Treasury functions for six years in another front-office position.

Brad Freeman

Brad is a Relationship Director supporting Financial Institutions across Europe & the UK. Brad works in collaboration with our clients to build upon our great partnership, delivering across the entire NatWest Group platform.

Brad has a wealth of experience from a product, industry, and service perspective, having joined the NWG as a graduate in 2011.

Prior to his role as a Relationship Director, Brad operated as a Client Service Manager and Project Manager. In this capacity he successfully delivered continuous improvement initiatives, product implementations and regulatory change programmes.

Iain Wyper

Iain has recently re-joined NatWest as part of newly formed Banks Coverage Transaction Banking team where his primary focus will be managing our Bank Clients in the USA, Canada and Latin America. Iain has extensive experience in the Transaction Banking arena and over the years has held various leadership roles in both Transaction Banking Sales and Account Management. He has a proven track record in developing good, strong client relationships with many of the largest and most complex clients and prides himself on delivering a high level of service. 

Mark Brant 

Mark has extensive experience in the payments ecosystem and a track record of driving strategy and execution in leading payments organisations. He has led large-scale customer-centric transformational change and delivered strategic partnerships to drive long-term sustainable business growth.

In January 2023, Mark joined NatWest as Chief Payments Officer, leading the NatWest Group Payments Centre of Expertise.  Mark and team are accountable for the Group payments strategy, payments architecture, industry relations and operations, developing new propositions and accelerating innovation.

Mark has over 25 years experience across the payments ecosystem, driving strategy, execution and partnerships through leadership positions at American Express and PayPal.  Prior to joining NatWest, Mark was Chief Executive Officer at ParentPay Group, the leading payments and SaaS provider to the education sector. 

Adrian Smyth 

Adrian is Head of Domestic Payments and Innovation and has extensive experience in delivering solutions in the Corporate and digital markets. A payments specialist, previous roles include Head of Global Transaction Services UK Change Management leading the delivery of payment products and services for Corporate and Financial Institution clients.

Adrian is a senior practitioner in the Payments Centre of Excellence for NatWest, specialising in innovation and partnerships and currently leads on engagement with UK domestic payment schemes.

Paula Thistleton

Paula is the Head of Network Management for NatWest Group. Her team manage the external bank relationships for cash, securities and collateral management services. Paula’s team also has responsibility for Partnerships in the Commercial Bank. Paula has been with NatWest for thirteen years. Prior to this, she lived in Dubai and worked as a Product Manager within the Securities Services division of Standard Chartered Bank. She started her Network Management career with ABN Amro after gaining wider banking experience through a variety or roles at UBS, Deutsche and Credit Suisse.

Claire Taylor

Claire is Head of the Propositions Design & Delivery team for Corporate Bank, Structured Finance & Financial Institutions. Previously Claire has headed up several sales & account management teams specialising in Transaction Banking and trade finance sales team across NatWest & Barclays.

Ian Povey

Ian is the CIO Payments Technology for the NatWest Banking Group. Accountable for the run, change and continuous availability of payments as a systemically critical participant in the industry. Ian is focused on modernisation and transformation of payments capabilities, collaborating with the business to continuously improve each customer journey and investing in team culture. Ian joined the Board of Directors of SWIFT in 2022 and serves on the Board and is a Trustee of Charities Trust in the UK. 

Stacey Wilkinson

Stacey is an API Growth Manager in the Bank of APIs team. Stacey leads the commercialisation of Customer Attribute Sharing and Enriched Transactions and has knowledge of the Open Banking/Finance landscape and NatWest’s additional commercial API offerings; Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) and Direct Access.

Stacey is focused on leveraging Open Banking to create innovative solutions that meet internal and external customer needs, specifically Account Information Services and Digital Identity. 

Caroline Haas 

Caroline is MD and Head of Climate and ESG Capital Markets and works closely with origination teams – both in the public markets and private finance arena - focusing on a holistic approach to sustainability, working with clients across products and markets, as well as providing ESG rating, regulatory and disclosure insights. In addition to the financing dialogue, Caroline engages with institutional investors globally to understand their ESG objectives and develop new products to meet their needs.

Caroline is actively involved in NatWest Group’s and NatWest Markets’ climate change programmes and working groups. She represents NatWest on the GFMA Board, the LSE’s Sustainable Bond Market Advisory Council, AFME’s Sustainable Finance working group and GFANZ’s Transition working group. Recently, she chaired a FMSB working group focused on ESG ratings leading to her appointment as Chair of the ESG Standing Committee. Participation in these industry groups enables Caroline to help shape sustainable finance as it evolves.

Given this dynamic area, Caroline is involved in embedding sustainability throughout NatWest Markets and the C&I franchise, from product governance, marketing and communications, supporting internal carbon reduction efforts and ESG-informed credit frameworks. Caroline’s part of NatWest Markets Capital Markets’ Management Team to incorporate ESG into the business and reports to Jon Peberdy, Head of Capital Markets. Caroline is also part of Stuart Foster’s Leadership Team to embed sustainability into the FI Group within C&I. She also sits on NatWest Group’s Climate Risk Oversight Forum and Climate Opportunities Group.

Christopher Agathangelou 

Christopher currently runs Digital Capital Markets, a new pillar within NatWest Markets, focusing on the implementation of Distributed Ledger Technology across the business. Christopher also heads up our Flow Credit business which includes Syndicate, Trading and Global Credit Sales. He and his team work with corporates, sovereigns, agencies, supranationals, banks and insurance groups to raise debt products across all currencies.

Christopher is responsible for driving connectivity between private and public clients with the aim of delivering the best products to our clients whilst at the same time supporting technology growth within the business. He and his team work with various partners across the market to find solutions as we transcend to market wide platforms supported by Distributed Ledger Technology. He is currently driving Data Visualisation for Origination with external partners across the FinTech community and sits on the Digital Assets Steering committee for NatWest Group.

In  2021 Christopher took on further responsibility for the broader Syndicate business and has since led various teams across Liability Management, Debt Capital Markets and Content and Advisory.

Thierry Remont

Thierry Remont is Managing Director, Co-Head of Private Financing Sales in Europe and European Banks Coverage Lead. Thierry has covered and engaged over multiple years with banks, insurers, funds and asset managers on public and private financing, derivatives and other investment solutions across Europe.

Thierry joined the NatWest group originally via the ABN AMRO Rothschild Equity Capital Markets JV. Initially an ECM origination banker working on Equity (privatisations, rights issue, ABBs, IPO) and equity-linked transactions across all sectors, he moved to FIG coverage as a senior banker covering banks, insurance, asset managers and sovereign entities, taking then the responsibility for Financial Institutions origination and solutions, and Private Financing activity in the region.

Patricio Silva 

Patricio was appointed as the Head of Capital Markets N.V in March 2021 and Head of Financial Institutions for Europe in November 2022. These roles are in addition to his existing responsibilities as Head of Private Financing Sales, reporting on a primary functional basis to Jonathan Peberdy, Deputy CEO of NatWest Markets & Head of Capital Markets, and regionally to Vincent Goedegebuure, CEO of NatWest Markets NV.

Patricio is a member of the NatWest Markets N.V., Private Financing, Global Capital Markets and Financial Institutions management teams. The Sales team is comprised of c. 20 people covering Banks, Insurance Companies, Asset Managers, Financial Sponsors and Specialist Lenders.

In his Capital Markets role he is leading the Primary Capital Markets and Private Financing businesses in Europe. As Head of Sales he is responsible for the coverage of Sponsors and Financial institutions bringing together the Private Financing’s product offering, Fund financing solutions, FI Advisory, Specialty Finance origination, Repo and Risk transformation and Risk Distribution as well as the wider FI proposition

Ritu Sehgal

Ritu leads NatWest Transaction Services and Trade team with a remit to drive business development strategy and PnL for Corporates and Financial Institutions across a payments products suite including digital solutions, trade finance, cash management and cards. Before joining NatWest in April 2022, she had a stint at a cross border payments start up as their Chief Commercial Officer leading the UK strategy and launch. Prior to that Ritu led the Financial Institutions Payments Sales team at Lloyds Bank where she spent over 10 years across FI coverage and Transaction Banking. 

Alec Brick

Alec is a Director in the NatWest Transaction Services sales team supporting Correspondent Banks and Indirect Access clients in providing digital payment solutions. Alec has directly supported our FI clients for the last 23 years, having more than 40 years experience in NatWest Group across numerous operational and front line roles. 

Viresh Mathur

Viresh has been with NatWest for 23 years, working across Dubai, Singapore, and London. His roles have included client coverage, transaction banking sales, trade distribution and portfolio management, and now in trade sales and advisory.

He has extensive experience in trade finance and trade services and is currently responsible for FI sales and trade distribution.