Nationwide Building Society Loyalty!

port_of_spain

bowlhead99 said:

perhaps the complainants have never tried to manage a financial institution with a 200 billion pound balance sheet

I tried once, but they called security

alypen

alypen said:

Well, The Coventry aside, I'm still waiting for anyone else to notify me of any reduction in rates whatsoever.  Can't imagine they're all going to leave things as they are, but it does seem strange.

Okay, Kent Reliance is now reducing by .50 percentage points.  Fair enough.  (More than fair, actually).

alypen

I really like Nationwide - friendly, efficient and easy to deal with which buys them a certain amount of inertia.

Me too.  I've kept money in my Loyalty Saver account for years despite being able to get much better rates elsewhere.  But a drop of 1.75 on my Save to Buy or whatever it's called is just insulting.

Thrugelmir

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  

Weeks into the crisis you would have thought that the realisation would have sunk in that times are far from normal by now. 

Vortigern

I transferred an ISA from NW to Paragon. Requested 26 April, completed 12 May

Sailtheworld

alypen said:

I really like Nationwide - friendly, efficient and easy to deal with which buys them a certain amount of inertia.

Me too.  I've kept money in my Loyalty Saver account for years despite being able to get much better rates elsewhere.  But a drop of 1.75 on my Save to Buy or whatever it's called is just insulting.

So you've hit the point where goodwill (because you like Nationwide) + interest rate < other providers interest rate?

If that's being insulted you've led a very sheltered life.

bowlhead99

Sailtheworld said:

If that's being insulted you've led a very sheltered life.

Some people do like to make things more dramatic than they really are!  I remember being stuck at an airport with yet another half hour delay being announced, and the aircon wasn't very effective. Some woman was on the mobile being quite vocal about how it was an absolute nightmare.

I presume she doesn't have very imaginative nightmares, and wonder if the flight delay was really as bad as if she were trying to run through quicksand to escape a thirty foot spider which had just eaten her daughter after chasing away the werewolf that raped her husband. 

Stenwold

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  Some other banks and building societies have done that but not Nationwide.

BOE base rate and mortgage applications have both fallen off a cliff. 
Withdrawing the top savings products will slow down new money coming in, but I'm guessing a lot of places have funds they need to unload until the mortgage market picks up. Cutting rates is the most effective way of doing this.

epm-84

bowlhead99 said:

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  Some other banks and building societies have done that but not Nationwide.

If you have a couple of billion pound a year interest bill and want to reduce it, the most immediate and effective way to do that is to reduce the variable rate interest paid to existing depositors - rather than simply withdrawing the highest rate saving products from sale to new customers, which would have an extremely limited effect on reducing the existing bill.

On all the interest rate moan threads we get people saying "you'd think the'd just do [x], why does the CEO and board of directors get paid big salaries for this shambles", but perhaps the complainants have never tried to manage a financial institution with a 200 billion pound balance sheet; the organisation is likely better leaving it to the professionals and remunerating them at market rate, rather than taking comments from people on a moneysaving forum.

It's the year 2020 - many savers are switching accounts, whether it's to another Nationwide account or to another provider.  It's not 1990 when a lot of savers would have thought it's a lot of hassle to go in to one branch to close an account and then go in to another branch (with suitable ID) and open another account meaning many would have left their money where it was despite the rate not being competitive.  There's admin fees for Nationwide to open and close accounts, so dropping the interest rate so low that people change their account type/provider is likely counter-productive.  It's also worth considering if Nationwide provide poor/slow service when closing/transferring accounts then customers are less likely to return in the future.

You're right that people on here haven't managed a 200 billion pound balance sheet but that doesn't mean the people who have experienced that are going to make the right decisions or that people who criticise their decisions are wrong.  Look at what happened to the likes of RBS and Northern Rock - people highly experienced in the banking sector screwed up their respective bank's finances to the point where they were on the brink of collapse. 

Thrugelmir

epm-84 said:

bowlhead99 said:

epm-84 said:

digalumps said:

No idea - it's almost like there was some sort of disease suddenly striking all their staff at once. 

So you'd think rather than hefty interest rate reductions, they would withdraw the highest interest rate saving products to new customers and leave any significant interest changes or new product launches, until they have the staff available to cope with the high demand that will cause.  Some other banks and building societies have done that but not Nationwide.

If you have a couple of billion pound a year interest bill and want to reduce it, the most immediate and effective way to do that is to reduce the variable rate interest paid to existing depositors - rather than simply withdrawing the highest rate saving products from sale to new customers, which would have an extremely limited effect on reducing the existing bill.

On all the interest rate moan threads we get people saying "you'd think the'd just do [x], why does the CEO and board of directors get paid big salaries for this shambles", but perhaps the complainants have never tried to manage a financial institution with a 200 billion pound balance sheet; the organisation is likely better leaving it to the professionals and remunerating them at market rate, rather than taking comments from people on a moneysaving forum.

Look at what happened to the likes of RBS and Northern Rock - people highly experienced in the banking sector screwed up their respective bank's finances to the point where they were on the brink of collapse. 

The Nationwide unlike many other building societies. Decided not to demutualise and has grown from strength to strength. With no shareholders to account to. Just members.