Natwest is offering fee-free green loans for small and medium firms to help them make their businesses more environmentally friendly.
Alison Rose, the chief executive, unveiled the move in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail.
It follows the state-backed bank’s ambition, revealed in the Mail on Sunday last autumn, to provide £100billion of sustainable finance to customers by 2025.
Natwest boss Alison Rose (pictured) said the move to a low carbon economy ‘is a £160bn revenue opportunity for small and medium firms’
‘Research last year found that small and medium firms account for 60 per cent of private sector employees and 50 per cent of the turnover of the UK,’ she said.
‘The fact they get ignored so often is something I get cross about and we cannot meet our climate change goals without them.’
She said the move to a low carbon economy ‘is a £160billion revenue opportunity for them to make money out of the transition’ and added: ‘It could create 30,000 new businesses and 130,000 new jobs. We are saying let’s incentivise them to go green.’
Rose is also making available green asset finance through the bank’s Lombard division.
Entrepreneurs do not need to be existing customers to apply for the loans.
Information is available on the bank’s new climate hub, which has help and advice on going green.
Rose vowed to make the climate crisis a key plank of her strategy when she took over the top job at what was then RBS in 2019.
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