£100 payment - Nationwide Fairer Share

TheBanker

You cause no offence to me @ForumUser7 but the flaw in your plan is the need for a current account. The profit that is being distributed has primarily come from savings and mortgage customers (because it's the difference between what the mortgage customers pay in interest, and what the savers receive). This is a simplistic explanation but the truth is current accounts don't directly make money unless they charge a fee. Especially not current accounts where you are paying the customer £200 to open it, and where they pay 5% interest and offer interest free overdrafts. It is therefore unfair to exclude members who do not have current accounts, when this is supposed to represent a fair distribution of the society's profits.

Simple solution though:
- For customers who have a current account, pay it there
- For customers who have any instant access savings accounts (except ISAs) pay it there. This could include regular saver accounts because they could treat the credit in the same way as they treat the prize draw winnings
- For customers who have a mortgage, refund £100 back to the account that pays their direct debit (no different to what some of the energy companies did with the government credits over the winter).
- For customers where none of these options apply (which will mainly be ISA or fixed rate bond holders), send the money to their nominated account for withdrawals, if they have one. If not send them a cheque or ask them to provide bank details. 

However I think a fairer way to distribute the profits would be as a percentage of the average credit balance on current and savings accounts, and the average debit balance on mortgage accounts (loans and credit cards do not qualify for membership). This is similar to how Credit Unions pay dividends, and would be a fairer reflection of how the profits have been made. 

Flakie

My husband qualifies as he is the first named account holder on our current account and my son, who is disabled and has his own current account in joint names with me qualifies, (they both have savings also) and seemingly I also qualify but I think the reason I do is because me and my son are joint account holders on another current account which is used to receive his direct payments from the local authority and also his own contribution to his care costs and from which I pay directly for his care. This is the only reason for the account. I have savings in my name as well. Can I assume that I can just withdraw the £100 from this account as the money doesn’t have anything to do with his DP and would be superfluous to it? I know I can ring DP and ask but from experience I know it will only confuse them! Just an interesting scenario and one which may be duplicated with other people. 

14wishy

I find the qualifying criteria for this payment very unfair. I have been a Nationwide customer for 25yrs. Held numerous savings accounts, ISAs, credit cards and current accounts over those years. So as a long term loyal customer member who, in March and currently has no savings account with them due to very poor rates, I will not qualify along with all their other members for this fairer fund.

Not very fair. Time to leave me thinks! 

km1500

complain to them make your feelings known

alembicbassman

Criteria stinks.

In Feb I paid in £359 In March it was £420.75 I also have a large amount in a cash ISA so I guess I don't qualify - My ISA is leaving the building ! They must have made more than the £100 lending my ISA funds to homebuyers as they're only paying 4% on it..

If they're lending at at least 7% then they're creaming £2550 on top of what they're paying me at 4% on the ISA which they will now lose as I ditch and switch.

General_Grant

14wishy said:

I find the qualifying criteria for this payment very unfair. I have been a Nationwide customer for 25yrs. Held numerous savings accounts, ISAs, credit cards and current accounts over those years. So as a long term loyal customer member who, in March and currently has no savings account with them due to very poor rates, I will not qualify along with all their other members for this fairer fund.

Not very fair. Time to leave me thinks! 

Really?  5.25% "very poor"?

allison445

General_Grant said:

14wishy said:

I find the qualifying criteria for this payment very unfair. I have been a Nationwide customer for 25yrs. Held numerous savings accounts, ISAs, credit cards and current accounts over those years. So as a long term loyal customer member who, in March and currently has no savings account with them due to very poor rates, I will not qualify along with all their other members for this fairer fund.

Not very fair. Time to leave me thinks! 

Really?  5.25% "very poor"?

This rate is for saving between 25 and 50 a month its not for lump sum amounts the Nationwide interest rates have been stagnant for a while at the end of last year even TSB were paying more on there fixed term accounts

Bridlington1

allison445 said:

General_Grant said:

14wishy said:

I find the qualifying criteria for this payment very unfair. I have been a Nationwide customer for 25yrs. Held numerous savings accounts, ISAs, credit cards and current accounts over those years. So as a long term loyal customer member who, in March and currently has no savings account with them due to very poor rates, I will not qualify along with all their other members for this fairer fund.

Not very fair. Time to leave me thinks! 

Really?  5.25% "very poor"?

This rate is for saving between 25 and 50 a month its not for lump sum amounts the Nationwide interest rates have been stagnant for a while at the end of last year even TSB were paying more on there fixed term accounts

That hardly makes it a poor rate though. It is a very good rate with restrictions on the amount you can deposit, just like many other regular savers on offer. It's currently my 5th highest paying regular saver out of my 29-strong collection which isn't bad going when you consider that 2 of those accounts I have that beat it are now NLA.

Whilst I would of course like to be able to put more in it each month or for the rate to increase further (who wouldn't), I for one am happy with this 5.25% regular saver.

Bizzywizard

My 16 year old daughter is really pleased, she opened her current account and savings account with Nationwide on her birthday in October as she started a saturday job. She is getting the £100, which will go into her savings account (£50 a month). I noticed the new bond account paying 4.75% so went into Nationwide and set this up with her today and we are transfering her Santander monies (with rubbish interest) into her new bond account . She likes the bond account as its locked away for 2 years and will then be able to access it before starting Uni with a bit of interest. 

Band7

I am guessing that Nationwide started with £340 million or thereabouts being available for distributing to members. Assuming there are 17 million members, that would be £20 per member if every member received an equal share, and would no doubt have prompted outcries of "not fair" from people who say - rightly or wrongly - that they have contributed more than other members to the profits (as some have already claimed in this thread).

Also, £20 would probably not be quite as much appreciated as £100. But paying all members £100 wasn't possible because Nationwide only has £340 million, not £1.7 billion, to distribute.

So they had to find something that would allow £340 million to be distributed in what could be considered a fair compromise, and also not cost the earth in implementation and administration costs.

I am sure they did some modelling to work out how to best apportion the £340 million, and have come up with what has now been announced. I wouldn't be surprised if they had also considered higher savings interest rates / new savings products but this would need to be balanced with Nationwide's ability to lend the money.

Given there was a finite pot of money to distribute, it is inevitable that there are winners and losers, and that many losers will be unhappy.