Your Liquidity

There is plenty of evidence that consumers are responding to the economic downturn by increasingly using cash rather than plastic to pay for their purchases. This switch is prompted by growing concerns about debt and a desire to keep a careful track of the money being spent.

A survey carried out by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) earlier this year revealed that UK shoppers are paying with cash in 60% of all transactions, up from 54% for the previous year.

In a statement, BRC Director General Stephen Robertson said:

"Hard up customers are increasingly reluctant to spend money they haven't actually got in their hands"

So as your business handles increasingly large cash volumes, we have a number of services to support you.

We are the only UK major bank to have in-house cash processing centres and this enables us to deliver both economies of scale and excellent standards of service to our customers.

Alternatively, customers can also take advantage of our drop-and-go services for depositing cash in-branch.

Whatever your requirements, our cash solutions are designed to ensure that cash is handled in the most efficient and cost-effective way.

For further details please contact your relationship manager or visit www.natwest.com/cashflow

Source: British Retail Consortium Survey, April 2008. The survey used a sample of 17,000 shops across all formats, with collective sales of £131bn a year.