£100 payment - Nationwide Fairer Share

adonis

Did anyone watch the AGM, one chap said he had a lot of money saved  with them but because he didn't have a  current account he didn't qualify for the fairer share payment so they told him to open a current account for next year.

Nationwide said they passed on 55% of interest rate rises to savers, whoopdy doo, what about the other 45% did that go to the directors?

DS_MSE

This Year's AGM Results - 2023 in Full  (https://www.nationwide.co.uk/about-us/governance-reports-and-results/agm-results/) ... 

Although Nationwide appear to have Taken Down / Replaced the 2022 AGM Results on their Website a copy of these can still be viewed and compared on Page 31 of this Forum Thread.

DS_MSE

Whilst I wasn’t expecting a ‘Major Upset’ I had thought that - with potentially 12.9M excluded Members from Nationwide’s so called ‘Fairer Share’ Distribution, the fact that on average only 530,000 Members Voted on each Resolution last year but perhaps most importantly - the strength of opinion voiced both in this Forum and elsewhere, this might have been reflected in the AGM Results this year - but somewhat surprisingly it didn’t even appear to make a ‘dent’ !

Although its difficult to compare the results of the various resolutions line by line if you just take the two elements that featured in many Forum Members comments -

• Approving the Director’s Remuneration Report
• The Election or Re-Election of Directors (Calculated on Average Results for all Nominees)

These both reveal very little change or movement and in fact the total number and percentage of those voting against the Directors Remuneration Package actually fell, whilst the average number of votes and proportion of those voting against Electing or Re-Electing the Proposed Directors was in fact almost identical to last year with little change in either the number of votes cast and those that were Withheld.

N.B. Figures relating to the Election or Re-Election of Directors calculated as an Average from the Total Votes Cast for all nominees in each Vote.

boingy

DS_MSE said:

Whilst I wasn’t expecting a ‘Major Upset’ I had thought that - with potentially 12.9M excluded Members from Nationwide’s so called ‘Fairer Share’ Distribution, the fact that on average only 530,000 Members Voted on each Resolution last year but perhaps most importantly - the strength of opinion voiced both in this Forum and elsewhere, this might have been reflected in the AGM Results this year - but somewhat surprisingly it didn’t even appear to make a ‘dent’ !

Although its difficult to compare the results of the various resolutions line by line if you just take the two elements that featured in many Forum Members comments -

• Approving the Director’s Remuneration Report
• The Election or Re-Election of Directors (Calculated on Average Results for all Nominees)

These both reveal very little change or movement and in fact the total number and percentage of those voting against the Directors Remuneration Package actually fell, whilst the average number of votes and proportion of those voting against Electing or Re-Electing the Proposed Directors was in fact almost identical to last year with little change in either the number of votes cast and those that were Withheld.

N.B. Figures relating to the Election or Re-Election of Directors calculated as an Average from the Total Votes Cast for all nominees in each Vote.

The fact is that most people don't bother to vote and almost all of those that do are predisposed to tick the box that hands their proxy vote to the meeting chair. 
And most of the members who were excluded from the Fairer Share don't know that they were excluded.

There are only a few ways you could make a dent in the voting:
1. A social media campaign that goes viral.
2. A front page tabloid campaign. 
3. Someone like Martyn Lewis campaigning on his TV program and beyond. 

And even then the protest votes would only be a few percent higher than the published ones.

Section62

boingy said:

DS_MSE said:

....Whilst I wasn’t expecting a ‘Major Upset’ I had thought that - with potentially 12.9M excluded Members from Nationwide’s so called ‘Fairer Share’ Distribution, the fact that on average only 530,000 Members Voted on each Resolution last year but perhaps most importantly - the strength of opinion voiced both in this Forum and elsewhere, this might have been reflected in the AGM Results this year - but somewhat surprisingly it didn’t even appear to make a ‘dent’ !....

The fact is that most people don't bother to vote and almost all of those that do are predisposed to tick the box that hands their proxy vote to the meeting chair. 
And most of the members who were excluded from the Fairer Share don't know that they were excluded.

There are only a few ways you could make a dent in the voting:
1. A social media campaign that goes viral.
2. A front page tabloid campaign. 
3. Someone like Martyn Lewis campaigning on his TV program and beyond. 

And even then the protest votes would only be a few percent higher than the published ones.

As I suggested way back on page 13, anything resembling a 'shareholder revolt' is almost impossible to achieve in Nationwide's case because of the particular approach they take to mutuality and the democratic process.  The senior management are more or less free to do what they want (within the bounds of the law and regulation) and there isn't much the membership can do about it.

Everyone assumes that because Nationwide is a 'mutual' it must be doing the right thing by members.  Not all members believe that though.

friolento

Don't most disgruntled Nationwide members have a far more powerful way to voice their dismay than voting at an AGM? Unless they are tied to a mortgage or a other loan to Nationwide, it will be easy for them to take their business elsewhere, won't it? Nationwide would soon wake up if there was a mass customer exodus, I am sure.

Zanderman

lcooper said:

Don't most disgruntled Nationwide members have a far more powerful way to voice their dismay than voting at an AGM? Unless they are tied to a mortgage or a other loan to Nationwide, it will be easy for them to take their business elsewhere, won't it? Nationwide would soon wake up if there was a mass customer exodus, I am sure.

That's very unlikely to a) happen or b) make a difference if it did.

As boingy points out a few post above, most people don't bother to object to anything and many are unaware there's anything to object to. So without a massive awareness campaign there would be little take-up of a mass exodus.

And even if there was, unless it was a really massive disinvestment, which is unlikely, it would make little difference.

Voting, if done strategically and in vast numbers, would have more effect as it specifically makes a point. Though even that, as pointed out many times in this thread, is unlikely to change immediate outcomes. It could put across messages though and could change future outcomes. A campaign to actually vote would, if successful, have more impact (well, a little at least) than a campaign to simply leave.

boingy

I'm sure the Nationwide management are more than aware that their qualifying criteria has ruffled a few feathers. There have certainly been enough complaints to the ombudsman to warrant them putting up a special page about it to discourage further complaints. So next year I would expect Nationwide to change the criteria or maybe even to avoid redistributing profits at all. As someone further up pointed out, a mutual should not be making profits - they should be using any excess money to make their products better value for all of their members. They seem to have forgotten that.

wmb194

boingy said:

I'm sure the Nationwide management are more than aware that their qualifying criteria has ruffled a few feathers. There have certainly been enough complaints to the ombudsman to warrant them putting up a special page about it to discourage further complaints. So next year I would expect Nationwide to change the criteria or maybe even to avoid redistributing profits at all. As someone further up pointed out, a mutual should not be making profits - they should be using any excess money to make their products better value for all of their members. They seem to have forgotten that.

Mutuals, and particularly if they're building societies, absolutely need to earn profits. If they don't then how can they e.g., expand and invest and how, as building societies, build enough loss-absorbing capital to get them through the next downturn when they'll inevitably experience loan defaults? In the past decade or so this is what Nationwide has been doing and it appears to be more than ready.

They don't have shareholders so they cannot do as e.g., Barclays did when the Bank told it it was short of capital and have a quick rights issue, they end-up 'doing a Co-op Bank' and failing or being bought/taken over because the Co-op Group, despite boasting for years about having many millions of them, couldn't raise a penny from any of its, 'owners' and didn't have the resources built up to see it through.

boingy

wmb194 said:

boingy said:

I'm sure the Nationwide management are more than aware that their qualifying criteria has ruffled a few feathers. There have certainly been enough complaints to the ombudsman to warrant them putting up a special page about it to discourage further complaints. So next year I would expect Nationwide to change the criteria or maybe even to avoid redistributing profits at all. As someone further up pointed out, a mutual should not be making profits - they should be using any excess money to make their products better value for all of their members. They seem to have forgotten that.

Mutuals, and particularly if they're building societies, absolutely need to earn profits. If they don't then how can they e.g., expand and invest and how, as building societies, build enough loss-absorbing capital to get them through the next downturn when they'll inevitably experience loan defaults? In the past decade or so this is what Nationwide has been doing and it appears to be more than ready.

They don't have shareholders so they cannot do as e.g., Barclays did when the Bank told it it was short of capital and have a quick rights issue, they end-up 'doing a Co-op Bank' and failing or being bought/taken over because the Co-op Group, despite boasting for years about having many millions of them, couldn't raise a penny from any of its, 'owners' and didn't have the resources built up to see it through.

I should have said "excess profits". Any money reinvested in the business doesn't really count in that. In Nationwide's case they have handed out £340 million to about one fifth of their members. That's not expanding the business or building up a war chest.