NatWest takes stake in small business finance start-up Bourn

NatWest Group, the high street banking giant, is taking a stake in a London-based fintech which helps provide smaller businesses with immediate access to flexible secured funding.

Sky News has learnt that NatWest is acquiring a minority shareholding in Bourn, which was founded last year to help SMEs address common cashflow challenges.

While tiny in financial terms, NatWest's investment in the start-up will underline the attempt being made under the bank's chief executive, Paul Thwaite, to accelerate product and service innovation across its core customer bases.

Last week, Sky News revealed that NatWest is in talks to sell its majority-owned workplace pensions platform, Cushon, to an arm of the pensions giant Willis Towers Watson.

Money latest: The earners most affected by £2k salary sacrifice cap

Its stake in Bourn forms part of a £3.5m funding round to be announced on Tuesday by the start-up.

Its new funding, to which investors including Portfolio Ventures, McPike Global Family Office, Haatch, Love Ventures and Aperture have also contributed, will be used to accelerate the rollout of its flagship product, the Flexible Trade Account (FTA).

Bourn claims that the FTA is effectively a reinvention of the business overdraft by embedding overdraft-style flexibility directly into the bank accounts and financial platforms SMEs already operate.

It says that this removes friction and unlocks a faster flow of capital to those smaller businesses.

"2025 has been a year of validation, proving that SMEs and their funding partners need a more modern, data-driven approach to working capital," Nick Tracey, Bourn's co-founder and chief executive, said.

"This investment round…shows that established banks see the same opportunity we do: to bring liquidity closer to the point of need and help businesses fund growth more dynamically.

"Our goal is to reinvent the business overdraft for SMEs.

"When working capital flows easily, businesses invest, hire and grow.

"That's how we make finance work for the real economy again."

NatWest's stake in Bourn has been orchestrated with a view to the two companies collaborating to assist the bank's mid-market and broader business customer bases.

The high street lender intends to use insights gleaned from the FTA to explore how embedded working capital can strengthen cashflow access for entrepreneurs and businesses.

"Now more than ever, SMEs need the right support to scale and grow - which is why Bourn's offering has so much potential," said Ladi Greenstreet, head of strategic investments at NatWest.

"Their founding team combines deep banking expertise with genuine fintech innovation, while their capabilities complement our ambition to help customers access working capital seamlessly through the platforms they already use.

"Supporting Bourn reinforces our commitment to helping fintechs thrive while ensuring our commercial mid-market customers can access the funding and support they need."

(c) Sky News 2025: NatWest takes stake in small business finance start-up Bourn