Nationwide take over of Virgin Money

WillPS

Albermarle said:

I am always surprised how much emotion comes out in any thread about Nationwide ( not referring to you particularly). At the end of the day its a free country and if someone does not like their offering, there are plenty of other banks, and a lot of much more important issues to worry about in the world.
However as you kindly answered my question in some detail, I will respond as follows.

Agree entirely. I think historically a lot of it has come from die-hard carpetbaggers who are bitter that their big pay day in the 90s/00s never came. More recently the Fairer Share promotion has caused some real saltiness too - it'll be fun to see how much of this comes out again this time around (when they'll have had a full year to ensure they would be eligible presuming the eligibility criteria remains the same).

If you don't like the cut of an organisation's jib, don't do business with them. There isn't a soul out there who's only choice is Nationwide for any of the products they offer.

Section62

WillPS said:

Section62 said:

...

Ultimately this comes down to entitlement. Your principal argument is that Nationwide should be doing either what you want them to do or what you think would be fairest or what the membership thinks would be fairest. That isn't how 'it' works or how they work. So long as they are not jeopardising the sustainability of the business they have a right to get on with that. You have a right to choose where your savings go and a separate right to democratically vote on allowing those with responsibility to crack on or not. Outside of resolutions passed at AGMs, yourself and other members have no say and (so long as it isn't affecting the sustainability of the business) they can define 'fair'. If you don't think it is fair, then that's fine, but that doesn't change the definition of fair they've come to. 

Furthermore there isn't a playbook for how a Building Society must act in the event of a surplus. There are a range of possibilities, including (but not limited to) investment in investment in back office, interest rates, additional marketing and acquisitions. They get to pick which, how much and what form exactly - not the members.

...

Still not "entitlement", no matter how many times you say it.

The BiB sum it up.  Nationwide is owned by the members, but instead of members it is this "they" (presumably the management and board) who make the decisions and set the strategy.

Maybe reflect on what you've said - that what the "membership [as a whole] thinks would be fairest" is not what matters, rather it is what "they" want that holds sway.  It might be mutuality in name, but the implementation is very different.

WillPS

Section62 said:

Maybe reflect on what you've said - that what the "membership [as a whole] thinks would be fairest" is not what matters, rather it is what "they" want that holds sway.  It might be mutuality in name, but the implementation is very different.

Very comfortable with my statement. I know a lot about how to get the most from the banks and building societies I do business with but very little about how to run one. I trust the banks I bank with and the building societies I am a member of to do that competently. If I didn't trust them then I would cease banking with them and/or let my membership lapse.

Section62 said:

Still not "entitlement", no matter how many times you say it.

It absolutely is you believe your membership entitles you to something which in fact it does not. It's the epitome of entitled behaviour. Whether it's a say on who should get £100 (if anyone) or on whether or not to takeover a bank - you believe you are or should be entitled to these things, but you aren't.

Section62

WillPS said:

Section62 said:

Still not "entitlement", no matter how many times you say it.

It absolutely is you believe your membership entitles you to something which in fact it does not. It's the epitome of entitled behaviour. Whether it's a say on who should get £100 (if anyone) or on whether or not to takeover a bank - you believe you are or should be entitled to these things, but you aren't.

Again, you are making assumptions about my motives, rather than listening to what I'm saying.

I believe all members should have a say about the way our building society is run - rather than being limited to rubberstamping the board's selection of replacement board members.

The big decisions - such as spending £2.9m buying a bank - should be subject to greater member involvement than just accepting the Chairman's assertion that the Board knows best. If Nationwide was a PLC then I doubt this purchase could be made without a shareholder vote.  What it is about being a mutual that means big decisions shouldn't be made on the same basis?

I don't feel entitled to have a say, and I know that we (as members) don't. What I do believe is that we should all have a say.  And I know that I'm not unique in thinking that.  Even if you don't agree with us.

WillPS

Section62 said:

What it is about being a mutual that means big decisions shouldn't be made on the same basis?

Seriously? You think members of a building society have an equal level of interest in their society as people who've invested money in shares of a company? There's no perceivable difference you see in an adult with a passbook savings account and their view (or even interest in) what might be right or wrong for the building society they happen to hold some cash with vs an adult who has made a deliberate choice to exchange their money for shares in a business as an investment?

What about the impact of a bad investment decision in each case? Where would that leave someone with the life savings invested in a bank vs a passbook account holder with <£85k in?

The difference in outcomes (good or bad) is gigantic. Massive false equivalence.

Rob5342

Albermarle said:

Rob5342 said:

Could one of you actually explain what critical features the Nationwide app is lacking?
Genuine question as I am not sure what I am missing.

No transaction notifications

No budgeting features

No pots to seperate money

No card controls

No pin reminders

No ability to see debit card number in the app

No cheque pay in feature

No ability to set up new payess, have to use the card reader

No ability to see all payments made to one shop

No pay nearby people feature

No split the bills feature

No cashback on certain retailers

No ability to see direct debts due to be taken in the next day or two

No ability to see other accounts with open banking

New accounts take days to appear

No ability to see tranaction location on a map

No ability to send a link to request money

OK, they might not be absolutely critical and not every bank has all of them, but they make things a lot easier and most banks make at least a half hearted effort to include some of them. Nationwide seem to have no interest whatsoever in implementing anything remotely modern. It's quite bizarre.

No ability to set up new payess, have to use the card reader
For info this has changed just in the last few days, if you register your photo with them the card reader will be redundant. So progress !

That's good news, maybe in 20 years they'll add one of the other features.

I find it bizarre that a company whos whole business is banking has such an archaic app. Given what other apps can do in terms of removing people from photos etc you wouldn't think adding notifications for payments would be very difficult.

friolento

Albermarle said:

No ability to set up new payess, have to use the card reader
For info this has changed just in the last few days, if you register your photo with them the card reader will be redundant. So progress !

They have managed to mess this up.

I was invited to register, using a card reader, for the card-reader-less payments. I eagerly followed the instructions, just to be told there were system problems and I should try later. I tried later, with the same result. After multiple tries, I rang Nationwide CS who said there was nothing wrong with their systems and I should try again. Didn't work. They then said I didn't have the latest app version. Wrong again. Then they tried to tell me my phone (iPhone 15 Pro Max, on iOS 17.3 at the time) was not supported. When I asked where the list of supported phones was, they said I need to go into Branch as they could sort it for me.

On my own initiative, I then uninstalled the Nationwide app and re-installed it. This newly installed version no longer has a splash screen inviting me to register for card-reader-less payments but I can change it in Settings. In theory. In practice, I am "not eligible for account biometrics at this time". I have used biometric login for the Nationwide app literally for years. I have been a Nationwide customer for 24 years. I am also less than impressed with Nationwide's app right now and won't be using them as my main current account anytime soon. I can imagine that it will get much worse when Nationwide acquire the hotchpotch of Virgin Money apps and systems

WillPS

Rob5342 said:

Albermarle said:

Rob5342 said:

Could one of you actually explain what critical features the Nationwide app is lacking?
Genuine question as I am not sure what I am missing.

No transaction notifications

No budgeting features

No pots to seperate money

No card controls

No pin reminders

No ability to see debit card number in the app

No cheque pay in feature

No ability to set up new payess, have to use the card reader

No ability to see all payments made to one shop

No pay nearby people feature

No split the bills feature

No cashback on certain retailers

No ability to see direct debts due to be taken in the next day or two

No ability to see other accounts with open banking

New accounts take days to appear

No ability to see tranaction location on a map

No ability to send a link to request money

OK, they might not be absolutely critical and not every bank has all of them, but they make things a lot easier and most banks make at least a half hearted effort to include some of them. Nationwide seem to have no interest whatsoever in implementing anything remotely modern. It's quite bizarre.

No ability to set up new payess, have to use the card reader
For info this has changed just in the last few days, if you register your photo with them the card reader will be redundant. So progress !

That's good news, maybe in 20 years they'll add one of the other features.

I find it bizarre that a company whos whole business is banking has such an archaic app. Given what other apps can do in terms of removing people from photos etc you wouldn't think adding notifications for payments would be very difficult.

I'm not sure about Nationwide specifically but AIUI the limiting factor with payment notifications specifically is not on the apps but on the banking systems themselves, which process everything using batch jobs - in simple terms there's a delay between the transaction occurring and the app becoming aware of it, which is problematic if you are then notifying customers that 'spending has just happened'.

LBG seem to have partially overcome this by increasing the throughput of their batch routines but we quite often see complaints of delayed notifications on here.

If immediacy is something you value then you really are better off using Chase, Starling or Monzo - who don't have the bottleneck in the first place by virtue of having banking systems which are less than a decade old.

EarthBoy

Albermarle said:

@Lightning360
It might look a bit more modern (the app that is. The online banking is still from the 90s) but it still lacks so many features that essentially every other bank has at the moment.

@Rob5432

It depends what you mean by normal use, I'd consider some the things that their archaic app is missing to be fundamental requirments. Changing the appearance is just a paintjob on a rusting piece of junk.

Could one of you actually explain what critical features the Nationwide app is lacking?
Genuine question as I am not sure what I am missing.

A critical feature for me is payment references. Nationwide doesn't show any references for payments sent or received, so if you're looking through your statements or transaction history, you won't know what the payments were for, unless you've a very good memory. 

Even worse, payments sent from one Nationwide account to another are treated as internal transfers, even between different people. Your statement/ transaction history doesn't show the other person's name, only their sort code and account number, so there's no record of who you've paid, or of who's sent you the money. 

Hoenir

WillPS said:

I might think that acquiring Virgin Money is great news as it'll expand the society's reach in to new areas. Someone else might take the view that acquiring Virgin Money is bad news because it'll mean there's a banking subsidiary, even temporarily, with a lesser reputation on "ethics" than they'd care to be involved in. Both views are valid personal views, they could even be valid reasons to decide to do more or less business with the society, but neither are in any way binding on the board of the society.

More likely it reflects a turn back of the clocks. When mutual lenders dominated the residential mortgage market. Mortgage lending is low margin low profit. Requiring huge amounts of capital to fund. The ability of banks to leverage up balance sheets has been permanently reversed.