NATIONWIDE BUILDING SOCIETY-MEMBERS FIXES RATE ISA ISSUES. 6 June 2021 at 12:03PM in Savings & investments 24 replies 3K views

Judith_Chalmers

I know I am not the only person who is having this issue, but  having scoured the MSE forum I cannot seem to find anyone asking this question.

At the end of March I had an ISA maturing with Shawbrook Bank, saw that NWBS had, what was at that time, was a really good rate on a Members fixed rate ISA at 0.75% interest for 18 months.  I instructed NWBS that upon maturity of my isa with SB I would like them to transfer the funds into their ISA.  Two days after maturity SB did indeed confirm that they had received a request from NWBS to transfer the funds to them, then two days after this SB messaged me to say the transfer was completed. This was then the beginning of April. 

I received a letter from NWBS confirming that they had the funds, but didn’t confirm the amount of the funds it did include an account number, the letter said that “I will receive a certificate within the next 7-10 working days”  this time came and went and I hadn’t had any certificate confirming my ISA status so I placed a call into the NWBS customer service team, the date at this time was 27/04/21 one month after maturity.  The team member confirmed they could see the funds were still in a holding account but that all was safe they just had a backlog all would be sorted, he did message another team asking them why the funds were still in this holding account, at this time I did remind them that it is regulatory that ISA’s transfers are completed in 15 days.  Although apologetic the member said its just the amount of accounts we have opened causing a backlog.  I left it at that for the time being.

On 01/05/21 I made an online complaint- received a text back saying we are in receipt of your complaint and will look at my concerns and it asked me not to text back.

When I had not received any responses from this call I decided to ring the CS team for an update.  I spoke to an advisor in the Savings Team, he confirmed the funds were still in a holding account- but don’t worry it’s all on the system just waiting to be processed. I asked him  why this is still in a holding account at this time given that legally an ISA has to set up and fully processed in 15 days, SB had transferred the funds almost immediately after maturity.  The advisor explained because their had been such a response to the members ISA it had caused a backlog they were working through, but he couldn’t say when it would be processed because their was at least 6000 accounts at this time to process.  I asked him to escalate my complaint, which he did. This was 07/05/2021  I had the escalation of the complaint acknowledged in a letter which confirmed that NWBS  hoped to be able to conclude this by 21/05/2021 they didn’t on the 20/05/21 I received another letter from the complaint team extending the date of the complete until 04/06/21.

I was so angry with this time scale, that I put together an email to both CEO&CFO at NWBS I received an email back from the Members Service Dept, it acknowledged the email and apologised that Joe Garner was unavailable at the time but assuring me he would see the email, they gave me the name of a Senior Team Member who had been assigned to look into this matter and that he would be in touch soon, when he didn’t contact me I decided to ring him directly.  Again he was apologetic about the delay and confirmed the delay was due to amount of accounts they still had to process, he assured me he would ring me back the following week Friday 4/6 but to date he hasn’t come back to me.

I know the next thing (probably months ago) I need to do is set up an official FCA complaint but the thing is I know that at this time due to their workload that any new complaints caused by covid that they have undertaken this  will also take many months to deal with.

I have told NWBS my concerns about the current global financial situation and the possibility that we are very close to another financial collapse with the chance of buy ins/buy outs and my fear is that if that happened I have nothing confirming the amount of my investment or a certificate that I can then prove to any FSCS claim for a possible reimbursement from them of my funds- I really don’t know what or where to go next with this.

Reading online reviews of NWBS on Trust Pilot reviews I know their are thousands of people in this same situation, some haven’t even had an acknowledgement that their transfer has been completed.  I now also know they have plenty of history of mismanagement of funds going back to 2008.

I did think Martin may address this in his weekly email and look into this for us with advise on how to deal with it, I sent an email to This Is Money asking them their opinion and to date they have not replied and their are no news stories about this appalling delay. 

Does anyone have any ideas of what is going on, is the NWBS still financially safe ??  Any help will be appreciated, thank you. 

dunstonh

is the NWBS still financially safe ?

Very......

masonic

There have been lots of threads in the ISA section of the forum about these sorts of delays. Nationwide is a common culprit, but is by no means unique in not coping well with home working arrangements. It is not a sign of "mismanagement of funds" or that "we are very close to another financial collapse". No FSCS claim will be required. The sky is not falling. Nationwide is just taking an unreasonably long time to open your savings product.

You complained on 7th May, so if the matter hasn't been resolved to your satisfaction by 2nd July (or if you receive a letter of deadlock in the mean time), then you'll be able to escalate your complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Providing the interest is backdated and you don't miss a tax year deadline, does it really make any difference how slow they are to open a fixed ISA?

kuratowski

They are backdating the interest too, so you won't lose out.  As it's a fixed rate ISA, I assume you weren't planning to make any withdrawals.

colsten

You can't complain the FCA as they don't deal with consumers. You probably mean the Financial Ombudsman? You can complain to them on the earlier of  8 weeks after you raised a complaint with Nationwide, or when you have received their final response to your complaint.

Judith_Chalmers

Many Thanks to everyone who has helped with a reply, mind is a bit more rested now, I’m just so angry with the delay having never experienced this is in all the decades I have had TESSA’S then ISA’s and as  JamesRobinson48 said: 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

My wife had a similar issue:  it took a good seven weeks from application to completion by NW.  She made numerous phone calls and sent them secure messages, but I'm not sure that made any difference.  However frankly, we were never seriously worried about NW's solvency or its ability to get there in the end; and indeed, the interest is being backdated to the start date.  But for the sake of a mere 0.75% p.a. interest the whole thing was far more hassle than it was worth, so I doubt if we'll transfer an ISA to NW again.

eskbanker

Judith_Chalmers said:

I was so angry with this time scale

Judith_Chalmers said:

I’m just so angry with the delay

Some frustration is certainly understandable, but anger, really?  Sounds like someone needs a holiday in the sun....

d63

eskbanker said:

Judith_Chalmers said:

I was so angry with this time scale

Judith_Chalmers said:

I’m just so angry with the delay

Some frustration is certainly understandable, but anger, really?  Sounds like someone needs a holiday in the sun....

maybe nationwide just have a knack of annoying people? i still remember how very angry they made me back in april last year when they cut the rate on their loyalty isa from 1.4% to 0.25% and without letting me know until a couple of weeks after they did it! grrr!
do they still have that outrageous slogan: 'we're on your side?'
ugh!

flossy_splodge

I also am having big problems with this new ISA.
I am impressed that some of you are making progress! I applied on March 27th  to transfer an ISA from another provider and just keep getting fobbed off with how busy they are but no real confirmation of anything!  I have also now decided not to open any new accounts with NW, the hassle is too much and the incompetence of their staff when dealing with complaints is appalling - tbh not all of them, I've had two that actually seemed to care!

ANGLICANPAT

I too applied on  27th March  with a fair size transfer  and it's still not appeared in my account , but to be fair,  the NW branch staff have  rung me several times to keep me informed  that its a  problem with a big take up  , and that the transfer is safe albeit still queued in the system . Cant say Im much bothered  since its backdated and fixed , but although Ive nothing to show for it  if ever I needed to claim if the unlikely event NW did go under ,  I presume  proof of existence could be obtained from the building society who transferred my ISA to NW . they will surely have required some sort of assurance of a completed transfer, for their own book keeping?  

bubieyehyeh

I applied in early April, and the ISA was ready to transfer, its now more than two months later and the money is still at the other building society.

I think Nationwide think by agreeing to pay interest from application date, means they can ignore the 15day timescale they are supposed to work to. I hope I don't have to wait for more than 15days when I transfer this ISA money away in 16months time.

If they do pay interest from Application day, I'm not losing money, in fact making a little more interest. However it annoying seeing the paper work in my "waiting on" pile for weeks on end.