Nationwide Fairer Share Payment 2024

Kim_13

£500 per month seems a reasonable pay in to me - if they went to £1,000, those on a full state pension only wouldn't qualify. At £750 those on the old style state pension might be excluded, although those customers might be more likely to be very loyal indeed - a large proportion of their savings with them despite them generally not having the best rates etc.

I qualify this year. I missed it last year on funding - per old RS terms, I had assumed that holding a FlexDirect rather than a FlexAccount would be enough to qualify for anything they offered (though admittedly I was expecting member only accounts and not monetary payments.)

boingy

Kat78MFW said:

 I'd paid £250 into the account on 1st of the month and at the end of the month. One time it was a mistake and I transferred it straight back out!  

And by doing those extra transactions you inadvertently increased your "loyalty" as measured by Nationwide's criteria.

I improved my "loyalty" by transferring in £600 each month then transferring it straight back out again in two payments on the same day. What a ridiculous world we live in.

Best wishes to you and your DH. Health is far more important than money.

UKSBD

I've been a member with them 30 years, have a fixed term bond, flex regular saver account, ISA, couple of other Flex savings accounts, but because I've not used my FlexDirect account enough in the past 3 months they don't see me as a loyal member.

It's had opposite effect on me, I'm moving everything to Coventry if they don't see me as a loyal customer this time.

schiff

GlasgowExpat2 said:

I haven’t received an email but when I log into my account it says I’m eligible. Interestingly transfers between Nationwide accounts seem to count as payments. 

Payments in don't, payments out do.

TheElectricCow

intalex said:

They should label it current account loyalty scheme, I got savings up to FSCS limit with them and didn't qualify both years just because I wasn't opportunist enough to cycle a few transfers in and out...

But I do question if my membership stake in and/or contribution to the building society is any less with my high savings deposits...

It’s almost comical really, I’m quite confident that I’m in no way a profitable customer for Nationwide and aren’t likely to be in the lifetime of my banking relationship with them, and yet they’re perfectly happy to keep throwing money at me over genuine “loyal” customers purely because I happened to make the right transactions at the right times.

My only funds held with them are in the 8% regular saver, I’ve never purchased anything with my current account, and with this year’s FS payment I’ll be up to £400 total in rewards for my assumed loyalty over two years. Qualified last year by complete coincidence, and this year only because I took a punt on the criteria remaining the same and cycled two extra transfers through prior to April. 

I don’t personally believe I’ve done anything worthy of earning the payment and I don’t particularly care for the building society model one way or the other, but still, as long they’re going to keep handing out money I’ll certainly keep accepting it.

SevenOfNine

We were lucky, got a joint FlexPlus for the travel insurance, forgot that we have a standing order to pay in £20 monthly to cover the £13 fee. We don't use it at all for anything else.

2nd qualifier are Smart accounts we hold jointly for our grandsons.

So £100 x 2 for us.

WillPS

TheElectricCow said:

intalex said:

They should label it current account loyalty scheme, I got savings up to FSCS limit with them and didn't qualify both years just because I wasn't opportunist enough to cycle a few transfers in and out...

But I do question if my membership stake in and/or contribution to the building society is any less with my high savings deposits...

It’s almost comical really, I’m quite confident that I’m in no way a profitable customer for Nationwide and aren’t likely to be in the lifetime of my banking relationship with them, and yet they’re perfectly happy to keep throwing money at me over genuine “loyal” customers purely because I happened to make the right transactions at the right times.

My only funds held with them are in the 8% regular saver, I’ve never purchased anything with my current account, and with this year’s FS payment I’ll be up to £400 total in rewards for my assumed loyalty over two years. Qualified last year by complete coincidence, and this year only because I took a punt on the criteria remaining the same and cycled two extra transfers through prior to April. 

I don’t personally believe I’ve done anything worthy of earning the payment and I don’t particularly care for the building society model one way or the other, but still, as long they’re going to keep handing out money I’ll certainly keep accepting it.

Worth remembering that Nationwide are far from alone in offering cash payouts to customers which must far outweigh the amount of profit they make directly from them.

LBG pay my wife and I £360/year in cash plus 2 magazine subscriptions and a Disney+ subscription. In order to 'earn' that we transfer a chunk through each months, which spends at most minutes in each account; outside of which it's rare for our 9 accounts to have more than £100 combined. They will earn a tiny bit in interchange commission from the debit card spend - the interchange fee cap ensures this'll be nowhere close to the rewards paid out tho.

Neither they, nor anyone else offering similar rewards, will be offering the money in expectation that every single customer they payout to will end up paying them back somehow. The play is that more is earned overall in time than is paid out.

The min/maxers, present company included, are edge cases at one extreme end of the scale in terms of profitability.

TheBanker

I was quite vocal about the unfairness of the scheme last year, when I missed out despite having a £200k mortgage balance and about £2k in savings with Nationwide. I didn't meet the 'deposit £500 in two of three months' criteria.

This year, I have qualified. I was sending £200 to Nationwide to fund my Flex Regular Saver. I changed this to send £510, then send £300 on to Chase to contribute to their monthly pay-in requirement for cashback. I make a couple of small debit card payments to spend the £10 remaining. Somehow, this makes me a more loyal member and I qualify.

It suprised me that they've not really changed the criteria this year. I would have used criteria covering the full year, since the profits being shared were generated over the full year. And despite qualifying, I still think it would be better if the mutual didn't make excess profits in the first place (i.e. offer more loyalty products with better rates for both savers and borrowers), rather than effectively acting as a wealth distribution scheme taking profit from some members and handing it to others.

Will be interesting to see what happens next year - they've kind of set an expectation now, but bank profits are expected to fall if/when interest rates reduce, and of course there's the takeover of Virgin Money to pay for. I will go through the dance of moving money in and out in the hope of qualifying, but I think next year's payment might be smaller, or have additional requirements to reduce the total payouts. 

intalex

For me it is (rightly) not weighted on how profitable each customer is, but it certainly is biased on specific member usage activity.

It is almost entirely an incentive to take up and use one of their current accounts one way or another, even the current account switch offer is intertwined with this payout such that you get paid either to use existing current account or to switch in another active current account, not both.

Kind of like mobile operators (used to? still do?) fight hard to increase active subscribers first and foremost and then worry about how to stimulate revenues out of each one.

Why call it members' loyalty when it's literally just a current account users' loyalty? Feels wrong!

Even the discussion for this payout is in the MSE current account forum, not the savings account forum (despite the payout being allegedly taxable like savings interest).

TheBanker

intalex said:

For me it is (rightly) not weighted on how profitable each customer is, but it certainly is biased on specific member usage activity.

It is almost entirely an incentive to take up and use one of their current accounts one way or another, even the current account switch offer is intertwined with this payout such that you get paid either to use existing current account or to switch in another active current account, not both.

Kind of like mobile operators (used to? still do?) fight hard to increase active subscribers first and foremost and then worry about how to stimulate revenues out of each one.

Why call it members' loyalty when it's literally just a current account users' loyalty? Feels wrong!

Even the discussion for this payout is in the MSE current account forum, not the savings account forum (despite the payout being allegedly taxable like savings interest).

I think they would argue that having an active current account demonstrates 'loyalty', whereas I imagine most customers with mortgages simply selected Nationwide because they had the best rate at the time and they're now on a fixed rate with ERCs. I imagine the same applies to a lot of savers, although there will be some savers who just stick with Nationwide out of inertia (is that another word for loyalty?), or for other reasons e.g. they want access through a local branch. 

I think they like the £100 annual payment as it generates headlines - last year it got a lot of publicity. This year less so, as it was announced the day after the Prime Minister decided to call an election - unfortunate timing for Nationwide! 

There are other ways they could reward current account customers - they could pay a higher credit interest rate, or they could offer cashback (like Santander Edge but without the fee, or like Chase on debit card spending). They could offer loyal members a reduced fee for Flex Plus, and they could reduce their overdraft rate for people who need to use it. In fact they did run a debit card cashback promotion last year covering supermarket spending. 

I expect they've considered all of these options, but decided the annual £100 is the most commercially attractive option. The other 'benefit' to Nationwide is that because the £100 isn't an entitlement under the membership/account terms and conditions, they can easily change the rules in future years if there's less profit to be shared. 

Personally, the £100 is a nice bonus, but it isn't going to persuade me to do more of my banking through Nationwide.