Nationwide's 'Fairer Share' £100 payment for eligible members

kaMelo

zagfles said:

kaMelo said:

refluxer said:

As a reminder, the criteria for last year's offer was...

• Current account: To be a qualifying current account, your account must have been open on 31 March 2023. Qualifying members must still have a current account in June. 

• Savings: You will have had qualifying savings if you had at least £100 in total in one or more personal savings accounts or cash ISAs with Nationwide at the end of any day in March 2023. 

• Mortgage: To be a qualifying mortgage, you must owe us at least £100 on your Nationwide residential mortgage on 31 March 2023. 

...but it was this stipulation in the small print that made me ineligible... and many others who don't use their Nationwide current account as their main current account, I suspect.

• Between 1 January and 31 March 2023, did you pay in a minimum of £500 for at least 2 of the months? Transfers in from other Nationwide accounts do not count.

So with that in mind, it may be worth ensuring the current account is used for the next few months in a similar manner. That's presuming that (a) they actually make the payment again and (b) the terms are similar to last year, of course.

What you've said is correct but important to note also that the pay in/spending requirement did not apply to FlexPlus current account holders. Being a paid for packaged account, merely holding the account was enough to satisfy the current account criteria.
Reading the AGM minutes gave some reasoning behind their decision to require holding a current account to be eligible for any payment.  At any one time there is around £35 Billion pounds sat in Nationwide current accounts earning no interest. Savers were rewarded with improved interest rates, mortgage holders were rewarded (if that's the correct word) with less than average increases to their mortgage interest rates.  This was a way of rewarding current account holders who had not benefited from increased interest rates up to that point.

Why not just pay interest on current accounts then? Instead they paid the bonus to active current account users who may pay in once a month and pay bills/withdraw/transfer out straight away, so have a very low average balance, whereas someone sat with £10k in a current account with no transactions didn't get the bonus.

I don't disagree, the flexdirect account generates interest, the FlexPlus used to generate interest, it's not beyond possible to enable some form of interest rate on all their current accounts.

This would also fit in nicely with their current advertising campaign about how they are different from other banks.

Alas, I'm not the the one making that decision, I just relayed the thinking behind why Nationwide did what they did. .

Section62

kaMelo said:

zagfles said:

kaMelo said:

Why not just pay interest on current accounts then? Instead they paid the bonus to active current account users who may pay in once a month and pay bills/withdraw/transfer out straight away, so have a very low average balance, whereas someone sat with £10k in a current account with no transactions didn't get the bonus.

I don't disagree, the flexdirect account generates interest, the FlexPlus used to generate interest, it's not beyond possible to enable some form of interest rate on all their current accounts.

This would also fit in nicely with their current advertising campaign about how they are different from other banks.

Alas, I'm not the the one making that decision, I just relayed the thinking behind why Nationwide did what they did. .

The FlexAccount also used to pay interest, as well as having the free travel insurance perk.

Then Nationwide took those away.

And later on, when making 'massive profits', decided to give free cash to a minority of members and expect us all to feel Nationwide is "on []our side".

Nationwide being "different" is just marketing spin - under the current leadership they are just the same as the banks, albeit with a different ownership structure and slightly different priorities.

boingy

I too think that they should be looking to reward all of their customers rather than a subset of them and the best way to do that is to pay better interest rates on savings and current accounts and also to lower their mortgage rates. They are fond of boasting about how mutuality is best but their behaviour and their rates make them pretty much the same as a bank. They should be aiming to use any profits for the benefit of all of their members.

gt94sss2

More job cuts at Nationwide: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/23/nationwide-building-society-jobs-redundancies-cuts

callum9999

boingy said:

I too think that they should be looking to reward all of their customers rather than a subset of them and the best way to do that is to pay better interest rates on savings and current accounts and also to lower their mortgage rates. They are fond of boasting about how mutuality is best but their behaviour and their rates make them pretty much the same as a bank. They should be aiming to use any profits for the benefit of all of their members.

I think this is a perfect example of living in a bubble.

You aren't arguing for "everyone" to get rewarded, you're arguing for everyone with significant amounts of money or assets to get rewarded - which will therefore exclude the millions of people in rented accommodation living paycheque to paycheque. 

Doesn't sound very inclusive to me? As a member who didn't qualify last year, I'm very happy to see people who are financially unstable benefitting from this and, quite frankly, have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the people with large savings balances or mortgages whining about how they are so much more deserving of cash than those who don't have much money. 

You moaned about them being "pretty much the same as a bank", this seems exactly the kind of thing being a mutual instead of a bank is able to do. You're the one who seems to be demanding that they act like a bank (i.e. neglect those who aren't as profitable and shower attention on those who are).

TheBanker

callum9999 said:

boingy said:

I too think that they should be looking to reward all of their customers rather than a subset of them and the best way to do that is to pay better interest rates on savings and current accounts and also to lower their mortgage rates. They are fond of boasting about how mutuality is best but their behaviour and their rates make them pretty much the same as a bank. They should be aiming to use any profits for the benefit of all of their members.

I think this is a perfect example of living in a bubble.

You aren't arguing for "everyone" to get rewarded, you're arguing for everyone with significant amounts of money or assets to get rewarded - which will therefore exclude the millions of people in rented accommodation living paycheque to paycheque. 

Doesn't sound very inclusive to me? As a member who didn't qualify last year, I'm very happy to see people who are financially unstable benefitting from this and, quite frankly, have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the people with large savings balances or mortgages whining about how they are so much more deserving of cash than those who don't have much money. 

You moaned about them being "pretty much the same as a bank", this seems exactly the kind of thing being a mutual instead of a bank is able to do. You're the one who seems to be demanding that they act like a bank (i.e. neglect those who aren't as profitable and shower attention on those who are).

But the profit-share didn't target those who are financially unstable. It used some pretty aribrtary criteria. If you are financially unstable you probably won't have a mortgage and may well not have the £100 savings balance required. You may not even be able to pay in £500 per month to the current account. 

What last year's policy did was generate excessive profits from some members, which were handed to other members. As a mutual, excessive profits should not be generated, so this was bad management. They should, during the year have adjusted their rates. Either charge borrowers less, pay savers/depositors more, or a combination of the two.

When they found themselves with excess profits, they should have found a way to return these to the people who had generated them - i.e. the borrowers and savers. I don't think it is the role of Nationwide to act as a wealth redistribution system. They are not the government.

I am also a member of a Credit Union. Their savings products are rubbish, but I hope having some cash on deposit does a bit of good in the local community, by providing affordable small loans to local people who might otherwise turn to doorstep lenders. If the Credit Union makes a profit, they pay a divident based on savings/loan balances. This means people like me, who are not financially unstable, benefit from the credit union's profits. I see that as fair, because I have helped to generate those profits and without my savings balances someone wouldn't have been able to have a loan. And I see no reason why the mutual Nationwide should need to follow a different model.

simonsmithsays

Months on there's is still a huge amount of bitterness on this thread from, seemingly, those who missed out.

Whatever, sensible, criteria they used to ensure those who actually, properly, utilised NW some would have missed out and been upset.

Move on and position yourself to be eligible this time would be my advice.

zagfles

callum9999 said:

boingy said:

I too think that they should be looking to reward all of their customers rather than a subset of them and the best way to do that is to pay better interest rates on savings and current accounts and also to lower their mortgage rates. They are fond of boasting about how mutuality is best but their behaviour and their rates make them pretty much the same as a bank. They should be aiming to use any profits for the benefit of all of their members.

I think this is a perfect example of living in a bubble.

You aren't arguing for "everyone" to get rewarded, you're arguing for everyone with significant amounts of money or assets to get rewarded - which will therefore exclude the millions of people in rented accommodation living paycheque to paycheque. 

Doesn't sound very inclusive to me? As a member who didn't qualify last year, I'm very happy to see people who are financially unstable benefitting from this and, quite frankly, have absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for the people with large savings balances or mortgages whining about how they are so much more deserving of cash than those who don't have much money. 

You moaned about them being "pretty much the same as a bank", this seems exactly the kind of thing being a mutual instead of a bank is able to do. You're the one who seems to be demanding that they act like a bank (i.e. neglect those who aren't as profitable and shower attention on those who are).

If they really wanted to help "financially unstable" people maybe reduce their overdraft rate from the ridiculous 39.9%. That'd likely help them much more than a one off bonus they probably wouldn't qualify for anyway due to the savings/mortgage criteria.

zagfles

simonsmithsays said:

Months on there's is still a huge amount of bitterness on this thread from, seemingly, those who missed out.

Whatever, sensible, criteria they used to ensure those who actually, properly, utilised NW some would have missed out and been upset.

Move on and position yourself to be eligible this time would be my advice.

We're nicely positioned. Made £400 by switching our "serial switch" accounts into Nationwide last year, worked even though we already have current account with them, and now making sure we make plenty of pointless transactions through them

But they'll probably change the criteria. It may be a reaction to MSE - after all if the criteria was announced in advance, it'd be headlines in MSE and people would do the necessary purely to qualify rather than act as a genuine customer, and the minimum necessary.

boingy

I can't decide whether they'll stick to the same criteria as last year or change those criteria and risk another s***storm!
But any business that gives money away is a company that would be better off finding ways to use that money to improve their business.