Paul Edwards is the Regional Managing Director for NatWest’s Corporate and Commercial Banking team in South West England and Wales.
He also chairs the bank’s regional board in the south west which brings together the different NatWest business units in the region. He spent the first seven years of his career providing the finance for private equity buy-outs, before moving into risk leadership roles in emerging markets and Europe which included launching banks in new countries, acquisitions, divestments and restructurings.
Since returning to the UK, he has run customer facing businesses as well as leading risk and operational teams for NatWest. In addition to the regional role, Paul has been the voice of the customer owning franchise in a number of key bank projects, the most recent being the implementation of the government backed loan schemes to support customers through COVID disruption.
Paul lives in Winchester, is passionate about supporting the region’s business community and chairs the region’s SME (small and medium sized business) Taskforce. He is passionate about sustainability, sitting on Portsmouth Universities Business Advisory Council for Revolution Plastics, and supporting NatWest’s sponsorship of the Bristol Green Capital Partnerships, Climate initiative. He is also passionate about diversity and inclusion, and a mentor on the Mission Include programme.
Paul has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University and an Executive MBA from London Business School. He is married with three children and whilst passionate about education and maths homework, he hopes to never need to home school again!