It’s wonderful that NatWest is once more marking Black History Month. We know the themes of Black history and minority narratives and experiences are constant, but this period does give us, as an organisation, a chance to reflect on how we have progressed in engaging minority communities and in building a bank that understands and supports diversity.

I was fortunate enough to be part of the team within NatWest that works on this challenge for over three years and although I’ve since changed roles, I am still passionate about supporting diverse entrepreneurs and stay close to the work the team continues to do. This year, much of that work and the learnings from it, came to fruition in the publishing of a key report called Time to Change: A blueprint for advancing the UK’s ethnic minority businesses.

Written in conjunction with the Centre for Research in Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship (CREME) at Aston University, the report united our expertise as the UK’s largest business and commercial bank, with that of academics and policy-makers. By working with Professor Monder Ram OBE and his team at CREME – along with numerous CEOs, business leaders and politicians – we were able to define and address the biggest issues preventing entrepreneurial success in ethnic minority communities.

We established that these issues are preventing £75 billion from being invested in the UK economy and identified 10 steps to transform support for ethnic minority businesses.

no shying away

For us as a bank, the task is a huge one and it’s not something we can solve easily or on our own. That said, since launching the report in May, we’re seeing greater engagement with ethnic minority entrepreneurs, building trust and being present in their journey. Our accelerator projects, which have been running for a number of years now, have been particularly successful.

However, as recognised by Time to Change, we know ethnic minorities still struggle with access to finance, language barriers, migration issues, mentoring, grants, partnerships, and the strong financial eco-system which is so often crucial to start up success and continued growth. We still have a way to go to be seen as an organisation that is there to help communities – that’s a challenge and an opportunity.

Black History Month is the right time to recognise this. Within finance, government and society, so much of this is about a difficult history of building trust. We’ve created digital bridges for minority entrepreneurs but being active on the ground, in branches and in communities will count too – this is about self-realisation for all parties. Today, we can build the right relationships to be authentic and sustainable business partners for the future. 

a difference on all levels

This matters to me on a personal level because the bank backed my proposal for the Time to Change report back in 2020. It’s affirming that corporates are realising the power and the responsibility they have on every level – something we also saw with the Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship back in 2019. Whilst I was the Business Inclusion Programme Manager, I was incredibly well supported internally across the group and was able to bring together key internal and external stakeholders including banks and members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Ethnic Minority Business Owners.

These stakeholders enabled us to validate the report’s findings and give it a clear route to being applied in the real world. Our work together has given a vision for increasing the current contribution ethnic minority business make from £25 billion to £100 billion to the UK economy. While also creating real dividends to minority and disadvantaged communities where this investment can have a huge difference.

However, as Time To Change makes clear, there is still so much to do. There is clear value in diversity of enterprise but systemic barriers remain within finance and beyond. To break these and empower genuine social prosperity we’ll need real leadership. In every sense, we’re a key stakeholder in this.