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What is NatWest's 'Know My Credit Score' initiative and how does it relate to the CDFI ecosystem?
Know My Credit Score is a free NatWest service that shows customers their credit score and provides actionable tips to improve it. It was accessed 83 million times in 12 months across NatWest's 17 million customers — and has since been opened to anyone using the NatWest mobile app, even without a financial product. The initiative is designed to help people build their credit records over time so they can eventually qualify for mainstream lending, with CDFIs serving as the responsible credit provider in the interim.
Free credit visibility as a bridge — not a destination
The core logic of Know My Credit Score is straightforward: you cannot improve what you cannot see. By giving customers transparent, real-time visibility of their credit profile — along with concrete guidance on what drives it up or down — NatWest is addressing one of the most persistent barriers to financial inclusion.
The decision to extend access beyond existing NatWest account holders is significant. Someone who has never held a mainstream financial product can now open the NatWest app and start tracking their credit health. That first step of awareness, as Brian Holland explains in The Responsible Finance Podcast, is what makes the longer journey toward mainstream credit possible.
CDFIs hold the middle ground while credit records grow
Improving a credit score takes time. During that gap — between "currently excluded from mainstream lending" and "creditworthy in the eyes of a high-street bank" — someone still needs access to affordable, responsible credit. That is precisely where CDFIs operate.
The initiative is not positioning CDFIs as a fallback or a failure state. It frames them as a deliberate, essential layer of the ecosystem. As Holland and Stuart Foster discuss in this episode, CDFIs fill a gap that mainstream banks genuinely cannot — and should not try to — fill alone.
Think of it as a relay: Know My Credit Score starts the clock, CDFIs hold the baton in the middle stretch, and mainstream lending is the finish line. None of these stages replaces the others.
A Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI) is a specialist lender that provides responsible, affordable credit to individuals, businesses, and social enterprises who cannot access mainstream finance. In the UK, CDFIs are represented by Responsible Finance (formerly the Community Development Finance Association). NatWest has worked with this sector for over 30 years, active since the mid-1990s.
"CDFIs provide a terrific part of the overall ecosystem of financial services — for those who are not able to borrow from the mainstream banks, CDFIs do a brilliant job filling that gap."
Brian Holland — Director, Customer Vulnerability, Retail Controls and Remediation, NatWest Group.
Holland has spent 14 years at NatWest, where he leads the bank's approach to vulnerable customers. His remit spans consumer duty, the retail bank's risk and control environment, and remediation activities designed to put things right for customers. He co-authored the joint foreword to Responsible Finance's 2023 impact report, published at an event hosted by NatWest in May 2024 — alongside Stuart Foster, Managing Director of Financial Institutions at NatWest, who has been with the bank for 24 years and oversees product and service delivery to institutional clients including banks, funds, and insurance companies.
The full conversation — including NatWest's three decades of work with the community finance sector, its Hardship Grant Programme, and its investment into CDFIs — is available in The Responsible Finance Podcast.
See also
How does NatWest refer customers and social enterprises to CDFIs when it cannot serve them directly?
NatWest does not have a formal referral system but signposts customers to established portals that share information about Responsible Finance members. The approach prioritises directing people toward the right source of help, rather than leaving them without options. Discussed in detail in The Responsible Finance Podcast.
What capacity building support did NatWest provide to CDFIs alongside the Hardship Grant funding?
Half of NatWest's grant funding was directed at helping CDFIs build their own capacity and increase overall access to affordable credit. The six CDFIs each received dedicated support — going beyond the immediate hardship grants to strengthen the sector's long-term infrastructure.
What were the key outcomes and demographics of the NatWest Hardship Grant Programme delivered through Responsible Finance and CDFIs in 2023?
A total of £416,000 was dispersed by six CDFIs, with an average grant size of £102, helping around 4,000 families. Demographic data showed that 62% of recipients were women and 66% were aged 25–44 — a revealing picture of who is most exposed to financial hardship in the UK today.
Key takeaways
- Know My Credit Score has been accessed 83 million times in 12 months by NatWest's 17 million customers — a scale that signals genuine demand for credit transparency tools.
- NatWest extended free access to anyone using its mobile app, regardless of whether they hold a NatWest financial product — lowering the barrier to entry significantly.
- The initiative is explicitly designed to be complementary to CDFIs: the tool builds credit records over time, while CDFIs provide responsible lending in the interim period.
- The ecosystem logic — awareness, interim CDFI lending, then mainstream qualification — frames financial inclusion as a journey with distinct, purposeful stages.