Military Audit - NatWest Group plc

Audit domain: Military / Defence Entity scope: NatWest Group plc and its direct subsidiaries (NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, Coutts, Ulster Bank, NatWest Markets, Lombard). UK Government residual shareholding is documented as historical shareholder-level context, attributed accordingly. Compiled: 2026-06-20 Method: Live web search only

Direct Defence Contracting & Procurement

NatWest Group plc is a retail and commercial bank. It does not manufacture, supply, or procure defence equipment, weapons systems, or military materiel on its own account, and holds no government defence procurement contracts. No public evidence identified of NatWest Group acting as a prime or sub-contractor to any national defence ministry.

NatWest Group’s Military nexus is entirely financial: the bank provides corporate lending, bond underwriting, and capital-markets services to defence primes and to companies with material Israeli military or IDF-linked contracts. These relationships are documented in the sections below.

Dual-Use Products & Tactical Variants

No public evidence identified. NatWest Group produces no manufactured goods and therefore develops no dual-use or tactical product variants. The bank’s role is limited to financing counterparties that themselves produce dual-use goods.

Heavy Machinery, Construction & Infrastructure

No public evidence identified of NatWest Group directly financing Israeli or settlement-linked construction or infrastructure projects in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Contextual note: The Don’t Buy into Occupation project’s November 2024 report ranked NatWest Group as the 20th largest European creditor of companies linked to Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, based on loans and underwriting data covering January 2021 – September 2024.¹ The underlying counterparties in that ranking are primarily energy and construction companies with West Bank operations; NatWest’s own construction-sector exposure is not disaggregated in publicly available sources.

Supply Chain Integration with Defence Primes

NatWest Group has provided documented financial services - in the form of loans and bond underwriting - to several large-cap defence primes whose products supply the Israeli military.

The June 2024 report The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers, published by a coalition of civil society organisations, identified NatWest Group as a financier of Boeing, Leonardo, and Rolls-Royce - all of which had sold weapons or weapons systems to Israel between 2019 and 2023.² Ethical Consumer, summarising the same body of research, ranked NatWest among the largest European creditors of companies complicit in arming Israel across the reporting period.³

Additional detail is available from the Don’t Bank on the Bomb / PAX campaign. Between January 2021 and August 2023, NatWest Group held at least £1.6 billion in outstanding loans and bond underwriting to six nuclear-weapons-component producers, including:⁴

Of these companies:

• BAE Systems held active UK military export licences to Israel issued since 2021 and supplies M109 howitzers capable of firing 155 mm shells.⁵
• Leonardo supplies naval-gun systems mounted on Israel’s Sa’ar-class warships.⁵
• Honeywell manufactures navigation components used in precision-guided munitions, including munitions a campaign report links to the 6 June 2024 airstrike on al-Sardi school in Gaza.⁵
• Rolls-Royce Solutions supplies Power Packs for the Namer Armoured Personnel Carrier in Israeli service.⁶

An earlier campaign dataset (January 2018 – January 2020) records NatWest Group providing a broader set of defence-prime loans and underwriting totalling approximately £1.83 billion, covering Rolls-Royce (£489 m), Honeywell (£340 m), Airbus (£239 m), Bechtel (£165 m), Thales (£110 m), Safran (£113 m), Boeing (£90 m), Jacobs Engineering (£72 m), BAE Systems (£65 m), L3 Harris Technologies (£22 m), and General Dynamics (£16 m).⁷

The armed-banking report published by the Delàs Centre in October 2024 (Armed banking and its joint responsibility in the Gaza genocide) placed NatWest at 75th among the top 100 international banks financing arms companies with exports linked to Gaza.¹

The nature of these exposures is general corporate banking - revolving credit facilities, syndicated loans, and underwritten bond issuances - rather than project-specific or IDF-directed financing. The bank has not publicly disclosed transaction-level detail confirming which specific facilities relate to Israeli military supply chains.

Logistical Sustainment & Base Services

NatWest Group does not itself provide logistical or base-services support to any military. However, one documented underwriting transaction creates an indirect link to IDF logistical fuel supply.

In July 2021, NatWest (alongside Lloyds and six other banks) underwrote a £500 million bond issuance by Ithaca Energy, a North Sea oil company then approximately 89% owned by the Tel Aviv-based Delek Group.⁸ Delek Group was named on a UN list of companies whose West Bank activities “raised particular human rights concerns” - specifically for providing services and utilities to Israeli settlements - and, through its petrol-station subsidiary Delek Israel, has held a contract to supply fuel to the Israeli Ministry of Defence and the IDF, reportedly renewed and increased by a further £130 million in 2024.⁸⁹

NatWest’s role was as bond underwriter for Ithaca Energy - a UK-registered, London-listed subsidiary - meaning NatWest initially purchased the bonds and resold them to investors, earning underwriting fees. NatWest’s contractual exposure was to the UK-listed entity, not directly to Delek Group. Amnesty International Scotland and the Uplift campaign criticised NatWest and Lloyds for the arrangement.⁸ No public evidence identified that NatWest took action to exit or flag the relationship following the IDF contract renewal in 2024.

Munitions, Weapons Systems & Strategic Platforms

No public evidence identified of NatWest Group directly financing munitions production facilities, weapons-systems development programmes, or strategic-platform procurement specifically tied to Israeli military operations.

The indirect nexus runs through NatWest’s lending to and underwriting of defence primes (see Supply Chain Integration above): Honeywell navigation components have been linked by campaigners to precision-guided munitions used in Gaza;⁵ BAE Systems manufactures howitzers with active Israeli export licences;⁵ Rolls-Royce provides the Namer APC’s drivetrain.⁶ NatWest’s facilities to these companies are general corporate instruments, not purpose-linked to munitions production.

NatWest’s nuclear-weapons-related financing (£1.6 billion, 2021–2023, across six companies) is documented and contested by Don’t Bank on the Bomb / ICAN campaigns.⁴ This relates to NATO nuclear programmes, not Israeli nuclear capability.

Export Licensing, Regulatory & Legal History

No public evidence identified of NatWest Group itself holding, applying for, or being subject to UK Strategic Export Licensing proceedings. Export licences are issued to manufacturers and exporters; NatWest as a bank is not a direct party.

NatWest Group’s Environmental, Social and Ethical (ESE) risk acceptance criteria prohibit financing companies involved in nuclear weapons production outside NATO-aligned programmes, and exclude cluster-munitions and landmine manufacturers.⁴¹⁰ The policy does not exclude financing of companies that hold active export licences for Israel, nor does it explicitly address supply to parties under international humanitarian law scrutiny.

No public evidence identified of regulatory enforcement actions, court proceedings, or legislative inquiries directly targeting NatWest Group’s defence-sector lending in connection with Israel.

Civil Society Scrutiny & Documented Investigations

NatWest Group has been the subject of several documented civil-society investigations and campaigns in the military/defence-financing domain:

1. Don’t Bank on the Bomb / ICAN / PAX - An open letter signed by over 40 civil society organisations was sent to NatWest’s then-CEO in March 2021 demanding the bank exclude all nuclear-weapons producers; branch demonstrations followed in 2022. The campaign remained active into 2024–2025.¹⁰¹¹
2. Ithaca Energy / Delek bond underwriting (The Ferret, 2021 onwards) - Scottish investigative outlet The Ferret reported on NatWest and Lloyds’s role underwriting the £500 m Ithaca bond, highlighting Delek Group’s UN listing and IDF fuel contract.⁸
3. The Companies Arming Israel and Their Financiers (PAX coalition, June 2024) - NatWest named among large European creditors of companies selling weapons to Israel, with documented financing of Boeing, Leonardo, and Rolls-Royce across 2019–2023.²³
4. Armed Banking Report (Delàs Centre, October 2024) - Ranked NatWest 75th among top-100 global banks financing arms companies with Israel-linked exports.¹
5. Don’t Buy into Occupation (November 2024) - Ranked NatWest 20th largest European creditor of companies with settlement-linked activities.¹
6. Ethical Consumer / BankTrack (2024–2025) - Awarded NatWest “worst” ratings for evidence of financing military/weapons and settlement-linked companies; ranked NatWest a “follower” tier in BankTrack’s Global Human Rights Benchmark 2024.¹¹²
7. Muslim charities banking review (2025) - An analysis of UK Muslim charities’ banking arrangements identified several charities as holding funds with NatWest, with civil society calls for them to switch banks on the basis of NatWest’s arms-financing profile.¹³

NatWest’s public response to these investigations has been limited to the position that it does not comment on individual clients.

End Notes