FF News Tattoo Studio: NatWest Boxed – Where Big-Bank Strength Meets Fintech Agility

At the FF News Tattoo Studio at Fintech Talents 2025, George Toumbev, NatWest Boxed, talks about how his career and interests align with the mission of NatWest’s embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service business.

Toumbev explains that his whole career has been at the intersection of technology and financial services, starting as a developer with a computer science background, then moved through roles in operations, technology, strategy and consulting across investment banking, asset management and insurance. That journey means he understands both how systems work and how businesses make money. What excites him most now is that technology is no longer just an enabler of products,  in many cases, it is the product – and he’s passionate about turning tech into real, measurable business outcomes.

Because of that, NatWest Boxed feels like a natural fit for Toumbev and describes it as sitting right in the “sweet spot” of his skills: he’s led in big, regulated environments, worked in consulting and strategy, and now runs a revenue line in a unit that behaves like a fintech but is backed by a major UK bank and enjoys that balance. NatWest Boxed can move quickly and innovate like a fintech, while benefiting from the governance, experience and risk frameworks of a “grown-up” financial institution.

When asked about the mission of NatWest Boxed, Toumbev sums it up as powering better financial experiences in the UK by supporting other brands. Rather than always being the front-end brand, NatWest Boxed helps partners deliver on their own ambitions by giving them technology that’s easy to integrate and built around strong customer experiences. The idea is that partners focus on their proposition, while Boxed provides the regulated financial infrastructure underneath.

Being part of NatWest is a major advantage in that strategy and notes that NatWest already backs a large share of commercial businesses in the UK. With NatWest Boxed, the bank can go further than traditional banking relationships, helping those businesses embed financial services directly into their own journeys. That combination of a strong balance sheet and licence with modern, API-led technology is what makes the proposition distinctive.

Toumbev is also clear about the complexity behind the scenes and exposes bank products on the bank’s own licence and balance sheet through a platform is a significant technical, operational and regulatory challenge. NatWest Boxed is now live, fully integrated inside an established UK bank, and already working with several strong clients, with more coming. In his view, every bank will need similar capabilities to stay competitive long term, but NatWest has moved early to build them.

Responding to the “Dark Knight Rises” analogy, climbing out of the pit and making the jump without the rope,  Toumbev describes their journey in phases. The climb was building and integrating the platform, then getting initial clients live and proving the concept and that jump has been made. The next phase is about scale and sustainability: growing those relationships, proving they deliver real value for NatWest and for clients’ end customers, and showing that the model can work at size over the long run.