PORTMAN BUILDING SOCIETY-bonus

Rippedoff

jUST RECEIVED A LIST OF THE PROPOSED BONUS TABLE FOR SAVERS WHO QUALIFY

£100 - bonus £200
£500 £200
£1000 £200

£2000 £200
£4000 £230

etc

Rang them to establish why a £2000 saver should get the same as £100. saver.
After 20 minutes (call cost me my bonus) they could not give me an explanation. Insisted these figures are correct

Bewildered

ReportInvestor

Portman have large numbers of small savers.

Why are you feeling "ripped off" when you are receiving free money? (10% if your balance is £2,000 )?

At the Universal BS you had to have well over £20K to qualify for more than the basic windfall. That was out of order, but clearly the Nationwide/Portman have not gone to those extremes.

I'm actually surprised that £4K qualifies members for extra. That's only half the average balance [At Universal BS you had to have 4x the average balance to quality for extra ] so, by contrast, at the Portman the bonus is going to be spread around quite widely .

The reason that £100 is given so much consideration by the societies is that a £100 member has one vote. The same vote as a £2,000 member.

seven-day-weekend

I will get the basic, my husband will get more :T :j

This will be the second windfall we have had from these account as we initially opened ISAs with the Staffordshire, which shortly afterwards got taken over by Portman.

I have also heard rumours that Nationwide will go plc in the future and therefore we will be in line for a third! :beer:

ReportInvestor

I presume, from your figures, that the Portman is paying 5.75% of balances[ , subject to a minimum of £200.

Could you check your letter and confirm?

mystic_trev

Rippedoff wrote: »

jUST RECEIVED A LIST OF THE PROPOSED BONUS TABLE FOR SAVERS WHO QUALIFY

£100 - bonus £200
£500 £200
£1000 £200

£2000 £200
£4000 £230

etc

Rang them to establish why a £2000 saver should get the same as £100. saver.
After 20 minutes (call cost me my bonus) they could not give me an explanation. Insisted these figures are correct

Bewildered

Simple reason - the payouts 5.75% so you're not being "ripped off" However - me with £45,000 is! The mx payout is £1,000, so I'm losing out on over £1,500! Do you see me complaining?

ReportInvestor

That's tough, M_T.

I suppose it's the price of democracy.

At least knowing the details means you can now move some of the money to a better rate, if necessary.

montycat_2

Hi ,

I have £19,000 with them .What do I get ?

Darth_Calculus

Hi Montycat

I think you'll get £1000 (pre-tax).

£1000 / 5.75% = £17,391.

So, if you have more than £17,391 in qualifying accounts, you'll get the capped bonus of £1000.

Could someone tell me whether the merger booklet gives you a figure of how much you'll get, or whether it just gives you tables?

I think I will be in line for the £1000 bonus, but I dont know if all / any of my accounts are "qualifying" accounts. Is there somewhere that will tell me whether my accounts are qualifying accounts?

I have:

Branch Notice saver Issue 1
Members loyalty account 2
1 year fixed rate ISA
Regular saver ISA issue 2

Thanks.

DC

Snow_Dog

From what I can see they add up all your accounts together, you are only one member and its the member that is getting the bonus.

Thus someone with £1000 in one account will get £200 bonus

Someone with £250 in each of 4 accounts will get £200 bonus.

If adding them all up exceeds about £3500 then you will start getting more than the £200 minimum.

The good thing is if your kids have savings accounts it looks like they qualify too (providing they are named on the account and the parent is only a signatory).

That means as a family we should be in line for £800 (minus tax on two bonuses). And yes the tax is applied even if your qualifying account is an ISA as again its the member that is getting the bonus.

If you are a non taxpayer dont forget to sort out the forms to get the full bonus.

This situation is definately an argument for spreading your money around rather than consolidating. Unfortunately it looks like the signaway rights are subject to the Nationwide criteria so any accounts opened in Portman since 1997 (I think) will be classified as signed away.

MarkyMarkD

I don't think you are 100% right about the kids' accounts.

If the account is in the name of "Mr Dad as trustee for Ms Child" then the Dad is the member and he will get it aggregated with his own accounts, which may well mean he gets nothing over the basic £200 which he would have got anyway.

Whilst I agree that it is being put about that the Nationwide sign-away will apply to post-1997 Portman members, I don't think this is definitely confirmed yet - it certainly doesn't make a lot of sense as the Portman members aren't choosing to become Nationwide members (and hence having to opt to sign their rights away to open a new account) but being forced to become Nationwide members. I wouldn't be surprised if Nationwide quietly let the Portman post-1997 members have full membership, i.e. putting them in a better position than the existing post-1997 Nationwide members.

My basis for saying this is that the 36 page merger document doesn't mention the word "charitable" as in "charitable assignment" at all. It just states that Portman members will be deemed to have been Nationwide members from the date their Portman membership started.

The benefits of mutuality, eh?

Oh, and more benefits of mutuality - if Portman had demutualised and issued shares to its members, these would have been subject to Capital Gains Tax and hence tax-free for most members. Because it's a building society merger, the payout is (firstly) lower and (secondly) taxable.

mystic_trev

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Whilst I agree that it is being put about that the Nationwide sign-away will apply to post-1997 Portman members, I don't think this is definitely confirmed yet

It is I asked them, and that was the reply I got! The Nationwide sign-away dosen't matter, anyway. There are now more post sign-away members than pre. The only way they can de mutualise is by scraping the sign-away, so it's nothing to worry about!