How NatWest is Overhauling Marketing Compliance with Adclear

In 2024, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) nearly doubled the number of financial promotions it amended or withdrew, with the organisation reporting a rise in misleading and illegal adverts. 

In an effort to maintain strict marketing compliance, NatWest has announced a partnership with Adclear, the provider of agent-driven compliance infrastructure for financial services, to overhaul how compliance works across the bank’s marketing and communications operations.

The partnership is helping NatWest to scale its content production while adhering to strict regulations around marketing for financial services. 

According to Matthew Harwood, Head of Marketing and Engagement Platforms at NatWest, the partnership has already cut compliance approval times by 80% and helped marketing teams to focus on producing “better, more relevant content”.

“Adclear has helped us turn compliance from something that slowed marketing down into something that actively supports how fast we can move,” Matthew says.

Overcoming the marketing review bottleneck

NatWest markets highly regulated products across current accounts, credit cards, loans, mortgages and savings. 

Historically, each product line had its own review process and tooling. 

As NatWest scales its marketing and centralises its operations onto a single workflow system, this fragmentation becomes a bottleneck. 

More content is pushed through fewer, centralised compliance teams, which risks slowing the business down rather than speeding it up.

Doni Hoti, CEO and Co-Founder of Adclear, exclusively tells Marketing Chief: “For most marketing teams in regulated firms, compliance is where good ideas go to wait. 

“Cutting approval times by 80% changes what a team is willing to attempt, because the review stops deciding which campaigns get made. That’s the shift every large financial brand will have to make, because content volumes are only going one way.”

Bringing compliance into marketing workflows

Adclear adds its AI compliance checks directly into NatWest’s marketing approvals process, replacing legacy tools and manual sign-off with a unified standard for content review. 

The platform is integrated directly into Workfront – NatWest’s workflow system – and screens website, social, marketing and advertising content in real time.

The platform flags where copy, creative or disclosures fall short of regulations before anything goes live, giving every team member involved in sign-off one consistent review process across every product line

For a bank serving around 20 million customers, the aim is to remove duplication, cut review times and give compliance teams a clear audit trail.

“NatWest has put agents inside the workflow its teams already use, rather than alongside it,” Doni says. “That’s the lesson for the sector: AI in compliance works when it sits in the process, and compliance teams keep full oversight.”

Who are Adclear’s key partners?

• PensionBee: Working with PensionBee, Adclear brought brand and compliance reviews into a single, unified workflow across both the UK and US. Instead of managing separate processes, all content can now flow through one system, with consistent rules applied across markets while still reflecting local regulatory requirements.
• Lloyds Banking Group: Lloyds Banking Group partnered with Adclear to integrate AI-powered financial promotion (FinProm) compliance and communication reviews across its operations, starting with a prominent pilot at Scottish Widows
• Intelligent Lending Group: Intelligent Lending Group has partnered with Adclear to improve its marketing and social media compliance through AI. 
• Slack: With Adclear and Slack's partnership, users can see promotion reviews in Adclear, but important updates come straight to Slack. According to Adclear, this helps compliance better fit into the way teams already work.