Closing Nationwide savings account and carpetbagging

LittleVoice

Open the new account(s) first - with decent interest rate (eg eSavings linked to Flex current as suggested above).

Once you have the new account operational with the minimum of £100 you can close the low interest account.

Your membership is then not broken so if Nationwide were to demutualise you would be in the same position as you are now (depending on when the charity assignment clause was introduced).

The reason why Nationwide staff would suggest you close the Bonus Saver account is because it pays such a low rate of interest and they are actually trying to do their best for you by getting you to move your money to a better account.

elantan

i've heard they have a new md..and i've heard he fancies demutualising so ....i'm planning on keeping my isa but will close my bonus saver that i have with them also

Milarky

tom188 wrote:

Do you live near Hanley or Dudley because these have local operation areas too? Also many of these ISAs do not allow transfers in, only new money.

No. According to my spreadsheet Dudley requires an initial investment of £1000 regardless of account for out of area members but otherwise has no restrictions - Hanley have raised their minimum investment to £1000 too and also restrict to a 'postal 30' account for outside local area I believe.

Correct. Not all do allow ISA transfers but those I listed for attention mostly did accept transfers (apart from Tipton & Coseley's ISA) T&C also does an ok regular saver - and I've applied for that instead because I shall probably not have £3k for 'new' ISA money from day 1.

On the signaways point - I'll study those later, the main issue is opening accounts with as many as possible of the remaining societies - and I reckon I can get to 75% of them.

[A lot of assignments appear to the CAF - a charity I support anyway. This creates an interesting possibilty. Either a) I'd be happy for them to receive this money so, simply by opening a signaway account I create a store of value for my favourite charity (by not becoming a member that value is redistributed to the existing non-signaways if you see my point) OR b) I deduct the some of the value of any missed windfall from what I already donate to good causes - effectively splitting the gain so nobody loses]

Buster_Danog

LittleVoice wrote:

The reason why Nationwide staff would suggest you close the Bonus Saver account is because it pays such a low rate of interest and they are actually trying to do their best for you by getting you to move your money to a better account.

I really didn't think that was the case at the time. I was convinced they wanted me to close it so I would not be eligible for any dividend. Oh well, if only I had listened to them. Fancy me not trusting the nice people at the bank.

LittleVoice

I think Building Society staff do often try to help.

On one visit to pay in some cash at the counter, Nationwide certainly pointed out I had a £2000+ balance in my Flex current account and that I could get a better rate in my eSavings account. (In fact I was leaving it there for less than a week and it was just coming up to the payment of annual interest so I'd soon be earning interest on the interest.) However I write of that because it demonstrates that at least some staff are on "our" side.

Kaz2904

We opened our bonus saver in January 2000 and they made us sign everything over then. I thought they'd just joined up with C&G because all their customers got a payout and none of the nationwide ones did.

tom188

From all accounts on the Dudley website

Available To:Existing customers and new customers who live within 25 mile radius of branches.

The Hanley Postal account does currently allow customers UK wide. However this keeps changing, as has the criteria for Beverley RS regular saver.

The operating restrictions have been varying on a regular basis for some societies. Just recently buckinghamshire raised their MOB to 1000 for out of area.

Milarky

Kaz2904 wrote:

We opened our bonus saver in January 2000 and they made us sign everything over then. I thought they'd just joined up with C&G because all their customers got a payout and none of the nationwide ones did.

C&G was bought by Lloyds TSB and remains part of that banking group today.

On Nationwide, that sounds like you missed the boat then. November 1997 is the cutoff for qualifying for windfalls in the event of floatation. Since then all 'new' members of Nationwide sign away their rights to a future windfall. But I personally don't think these signaways mean anything in the event the Society changing its mind about demutualisation - because to float they need 75 backing and all members have votes. Whilst voting is a minority sport among BS members - so a large percentage of signaways could be expected to not bother and so not affect the outcome - 75 percent in practice requires bribery on a mammouth scale. Standard Life Board removed their signaway clause (technnically costing me money as I was a pre-signaway customer) when they wanted members to votes for it (they defeated the earlier ballot in 2000) so I'd expect no less hypocrisy from Nationwide.

(So keep £100 with them from now on - Phillip Williamson is gonig this year and at some point they'll drop the pretence that they aren't just another bank.)

Buster_Danog

Does anyone remember the voting forms that came round for demutualisation? It was an awful example of a biased voting form. They used all the tricks in the book, including confusing people with colours. That is to say you voted yes on all pages in a red box, but when it came to the question on demutualisation they switched the colours round.

gwapenut

cheggers wrote:

Thats right list, might have a look at this to add to my collection.

Have you a list of which have 5 year signaways and life time signaways

The signaway may not matter except for the largest societies.

IIRC, the signaway only comes into play in the event of demutualisation.

In the event of takeover, as in Lambeth -> Portman -> Nationwide, this is not demutualisation and I think even signaways got (Lambeth) / will get (Portman) some money?