Plans to sell the government's stake in NatWest Group PLC (LSE:NWG) have reportedly been discussed with investment platforms Hargreaves Lansdown and AJ Bell.
The talks with the DIY investment platform companies are at an early stage, Bloomberg reported, noting that the government asked the firms to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said in his autumn statement that the plan was to sell all state-owned shares in the lender by 2026 and that the Treasury would look at a retail offer "in the next 12 months, subject to supportive market conditions and achieving value for money".
He is expected to confirm the retail sale in next week's Budget, according to the newswire report.
After bailing out what was known at the time as The Royal Bank of Scotland in the financial crisis, the government became the majority shareholder of RBS in November 2008 with a 58% stake.
In recent years the Treasury has been slowly offloading shares, with a sale earlier this week taking the stake to below 33%.
According to an announcement on Monday, UK Government Investments Limited, an arm of HMT, owned 11,537,714,952 shares, or 32.88% of the total.