Nationwide take over of Virgin Money

DS_MSE

Gosh WillPS you must spend a lot of time on this Forum.

Whilst I don't profess to know all the rules & regulations that govern an organisation like Nationwide, those that affect Take Overs, nor do I know whether buying Virgin Money will be a sound investment for Nationwide to fulfill their Business Strategy and ambition to grow, but like any Customer who has had a long relationship with an organisation I find it disappointing when an official communication is (without any apparent evidence to the contrary) misleading.

I am not interested whether those consulted or those that expressed an opinion (if in fact anyone did) were for or against the acquisition its simply the fact that Nationwide are publicly suggesting they have 'taken the comments received from members into account' when there was no 'open' mechanism to provide or record this in the 12 Days prior to them confirming their intentions but in doing so are alluding that these views have been taken into account when coming to their decision to proceed with their £2.9 BN acquisition of Virgin Money but in truth having provided no mechanism for Members to express their views probably amount to just a handful of emails unless they used their pre-existing 'Connect Community' Panel but if they did, why not clearly state this, to be fully transparent.

Either way I have expressed my view and I just hope for the sake of all Nationwide Members, that the Executive Team at Nationwide have carried out their duties & responsibilities diligently and we are not all posting about this in 4 Years time.

WillPS

I certainly do spend too much time on here, that's true enough. I have learned a lot through the course of following discussions; often in response to members who feel entitled to something which in fact, and for good reason, they are not. My observation having spent all that time is that Nationwide seems to suffer from this especially, often entirely unfairly and by individuals who are clearly frustrated by the fact their demutualisation payday never came and despite that ship sailing 20+ years ago, haven't given up the self-entitled dream. I digress.

I don't know all the rules either; but I do pay attention to the media (the previously mentioned rules were referenced in an opinion piece by Nils Pratley, linked further up). IANAL and I could be wrong, but it checks out as far as I'm concerned and if it is correct then there's little point being wound up by it; "old man shouts at cloud" springs to mind.

[Deleted User]

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hoenir said:

[Deleted User] said:

boingy said:

The buy out will make Nationwide "the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group". Nothing to do with benefitting members or customers. It's just a quick way to grow.

As a Building Society, it's main raison d'être is to benefit it's members (owners) and simply becoming the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group doesn't necessarily do that...

Remaining a UK mutually owned lender. Is far better than being taken over by a US "maximum profit / send the profits abroad to shareholders" bank.  

Mutually owned is just an ownership model - it doesn't mean that an organisation is run better or worse than a standard PLC. I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre (definitely not any better than it's PLC brethren) yet unlike them it's not produced a dividend to it's owners unless you count the haphazard £100 payments last year.

Most banks go though a spell with better products and then return to mediocrity. Nationwide is no different. I currently have an 8% regular saver (now 6.5%). HSBC, TSB, Barclays and Halifax currently have nothing much  to write home about.

The Nationwide supermarket cashback a year ago was pretty decent, and many started out with the Flexdirect current account with 5% interest on up to £1,000.

Are you seriously suggesting that either 'flash in the pan' offer demonstrates benefits of mutuality?!

Take the latter: FlexDirect is a classic retail banking loss leader -  after requiring you depositing 1K per month, you have a potential £4.16 monthly credit interest for that first year. This normalises to a potential benefit of 83p monthly credit interest - for which you give up Nationwide branch access, can't use your local Post Office to make deposits, pay circa 40% for borrowing and pay 2.99% overseas usage. Fandabidozi!

I am just stating facts. I don’t have an agenda. It was not my intention to infer any benefits of mutuality.

I was just challenging your contention that “Nationwide is worse as all it’s products are now mediocre” Just like most of the banks most of the time.

It's not a contention - their products are mediocre (even the FlexDirect that you noted) & their infrastructure is creaking (their payments services are frequently down on either a planned or unplanned basis like a few days ago)

WillPS

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hoenir said:

[Deleted User] said:

boingy said:

The buy out will make Nationwide "the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group". Nothing to do with benefitting members or customers. It's just a quick way to grow.

As a Building Society, it's main raison d'être is to benefit it's members (owners) and simply becoming the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group doesn't necessarily do that...

Remaining a UK mutually owned lender. Is far better than being taken over by a US "maximum profit / send the profits abroad to shareholders" bank.  

Mutually owned is just an ownership model - it doesn't mean that an organisation is run better or worse than a standard PLC. I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre (definitely not any better than it's PLC brethren) yet unlike them it's not produced a dividend to it's owners unless you count the haphazard £100 payments last year.

Most banks go though a spell with better products and then return to mediocrity. Nationwide is no different. I currently have an 8% regular saver (now 6.5%). HSBC, TSB, Barclays and Halifax currently have nothing much  to write home about.

The Nationwide supermarket cashback a year ago was pretty decent, and many started out with the Flexdirect current account with 5% interest on up to £1,000.

Are you seriously suggesting that either 'flash in the pan' offer demonstrates benefits of mutuality?!

Take the latter: FlexDirect is a classic retail banking loss leader -  after requiring you depositing 1K per month, you have a potential £4.16 monthly credit interest for that first year. This normalises to a potential benefit of 83p monthly credit interest - for which you give up Nationwide branch access, can't use your local Post Office to make deposits, pay circa 40% for borrowing and pay 2.99% overseas usage. Fandabidozi!

I am just stating facts. I don’t have an agenda. It was not my intention to infer any benefits of mutuality.

I was just challenging your contention that “Nationwide is worse as all it’s products are now mediocre” Just like most of the banks most of the time.

It's not a contention - their products are mediocre (even the FlexDirect that you noted) 

This is an opinion, not a fact. In terms of adult current accounts they have one which is market leading (FlexPlus), a range of average ones (FlexAccount, FlexStudent, FlexBasic) and FlexDirect which is an oddball. My contention is that makes their current account offer overall 'good, but could be better'. 

RG2015

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hoenir said:

[Deleted User] said:

boingy said:

The buy out will make Nationwide "the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group". Nothing to do with benefitting members or customers. It's just a quick way to grow.

As a Building Society, it's main raison d'être is to benefit it's members (owners) and simply becoming the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group doesn't necessarily do that...

Remaining a UK mutually owned lender. Is far better than being taken over by a US "maximum profit / send the profits abroad to shareholders" bank.  

Mutually owned is just an ownership model - it doesn't mean that an organisation is run better or worse than a standard PLC. I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre (definitely not any better than it's PLC brethren) yet unlike them it's not produced a dividend to it's owners unless you count the haphazard £100 payments last year.

Most banks go though a spell with better products and then return to mediocrity. Nationwide is no different. I currently have an 8% regular saver (now 6.5%). HSBC, TSB, Barclays and Halifax currently have nothing much  to write home about.

The Nationwide supermarket cashback a year ago was pretty decent, and many started out with the Flexdirect current account with 5% interest on up to £1,000.

Are you seriously suggesting that either 'flash in the pan' offer demonstrates benefits of mutuality?!

Take the latter: FlexDirect is a classic retail banking loss leader -  after requiring you depositing 1K per month, you have a potential £4.16 monthly credit interest for that first year. This normalises to a potential benefit of 83p monthly credit interest - for which you give up Nationwide branch access, can't use your local Post Office to make deposits, pay circa 40% for borrowing and pay 2.99% overseas usage. Fandabidozi!

I am just stating facts. I don’t have an agenda. It was not my intention to infer any benefits of mutuality.

I was just challenging your contention that “Nationwide is worse as all it’s products are now mediocre” Just like most of the banks most of the time.

It's not a contention - their products are mediocre (even the FlexDirect that you noted) & their infrastructure is creaking (their payments services are frequently down on either a planned or unplanned basis like a few days ago)

You said;

"I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre"

You cannot contend something and then say it's not a contention.

RRatchet

I am a member of Nationwide (& have been for a fairly long time) have had a personal account with Clydesdale also had a business account with Clydesdale that converted to being a Virgin business account. I'm not a fan of Virgin Money, 95% one star ratings on Trustpilot with many of them saying if they could give it zero stars if they could. I don't want my bankers to wear casual, brightly coloured clothes  appropriate for children's tv nor to have an average age of 17. I want experienced, serious bankers with gravitas and yes a boring predictable stable system. I've never had a problem with the Nationwide App or website, the Clydesdale App was OK but the Virgin App was so much of a disaster I ditched it. So I was quietly pleased with the news that Nationwide was taking over Virgin. I'll be pretty happy to see the back of Virgin branding & I like that they are less likely to close branches.  But it's a bit concerning that others have found the Nationwide's systems creaking.....I hope that they are not thinking that they might be able to solve that problem by using Virgin's platform. It is also concerning that members mutuals don't have a say in decisions as big as this.

Surfer01

Instead of spending millions on buying Virgin, maybe they should spend money fixing the useless Message system.  Over the past few months I have had the unfortunate experience of having to use it.  Each time it has taken 20 or more minutes to be connected and then most times they are unable to answer your query so you need to phone in anyway. Again today I need to find out why a payment had been returned and over half an hour later I was none the wiser.  Once connected to a rep each time you answered their question it would take over 10 minutes, it would take another 10 minutes to get any form of response which was another question to a simple query about why the payment was returned! 

WillPS

The words 'urinating' and 'wind' spring to mind.

[Deleted User]

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hoenir said:

[Deleted User] said:

boingy said:

The buy out will make Nationwide "the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group". Nothing to do with benefitting members or customers. It's just a quick way to grow.

As a Building Society, it's main raison d'être is to benefit it's members (owners) and simply becoming the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group doesn't necessarily do that...

Remaining a UK mutually owned lender. Is far better than being taken over by a US "maximum profit / send the profits abroad to shareholders" bank.  

Mutually owned is just an ownership model - it doesn't mean that an organisation is run better or worse than a standard PLC. I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre (definitely not any better than it's PLC brethren) yet unlike them it's not produced a dividend to it's owners unless you count the haphazard £100 payments last year.

Most banks go though a spell with better products and then return to mediocrity. Nationwide is no different. I currently have an 8% regular saver (now 6.5%). HSBC, TSB, Barclays and Halifax currently have nothing much  to write home about.

The Nationwide supermarket cashback a year ago was pretty decent, and many started out with the Flexdirect current account with 5% interest on up to £1,000.

Are you seriously suggesting that either 'flash in the pan' offer demonstrates benefits of mutuality?!

Take the latter: FlexDirect is a classic retail banking loss leader -  after requiring you depositing 1K per month, you have a potential £4.16 monthly credit interest for that first year. This normalises to a potential benefit of 83p monthly credit interest - for which you give up Nationwide branch access, can't use your local Post Office to make deposits, pay circa 40% for borrowing and pay 2.99% overseas usage. Fandabidozi!

I am just stating facts. I don’t have an agenda. It was not my intention to infer any benefits of mutuality.

I was just challenging your contention that “Nationwide is worse as all it’s products are now mediocre” Just like most of the banks most of the time.

It's not a contention - their products are mediocre (even the FlexDirect that you noted) & their infrastructure is creaking (their payments services are frequently down on either a planned or unplanned basis like a few days ago)

You said;

"I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre"

You cannot contend something and then say it's not a contention.

True.

It's been corrected now to remove 'the contention' - Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre...

WillPS

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

RG2015 said:

[Deleted User] said:

Hoenir said:

[Deleted User] said:

boingy said:

The buy out will make Nationwide "the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group". Nothing to do with benefitting members or customers. It's just a quick way to grow.

As a Building Society, it's main raison d'être is to benefit it's members (owners) and simply becoming the UK's second largest mortgage and savings group doesn't necessarily do that...

Remaining a UK mutually owned lender. Is far better than being taken over by a US "maximum profit / send the profits abroad to shareholders" bank.  

Mutually owned is just an ownership model - it doesn't mean that an organisation is run better or worse than a standard PLC. I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre (definitely not any better than it's PLC brethren) yet unlike them it's not produced a dividend to it's owners unless you count the haphazard £100 payments last year.

Most banks go though a spell with better products and then return to mediocrity. Nationwide is no different. I currently have an 8% regular saver (now 6.5%). HSBC, TSB, Barclays and Halifax currently have nothing much  to write home about.

The Nationwide supermarket cashback a year ago was pretty decent, and many started out with the Flexdirect current account with 5% interest on up to £1,000.

Are you seriously suggesting that either 'flash in the pan' offer demonstrates benefits of mutuality?!

Take the latter: FlexDirect is a classic retail banking loss leader -  after requiring you depositing 1K per month, you have a potential £4.16 monthly credit interest for that first year. This normalises to a potential benefit of 83p monthly credit interest - for which you give up Nationwide branch access, can't use your local Post Office to make deposits, pay circa 40% for borrowing and pay 2.99% overseas usage. Fandabidozi!

I am just stating facts. I don’t have an agenda. It was not my intention to infer any benefits of mutuality.

I was just challenging your contention that “Nationwide is worse as all it’s products are now mediocre” Just like most of the banks most of the time.

It's not a contention - their products are mediocre (even the FlexDirect that you noted) & their infrastructure is creaking (their payments services are frequently down on either a planned or unplanned basis like a few days ago)

You said;

"I would contend that Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre"

You cannot contend something and then say it's not a contention.

True.

It's been corrected now to remove 'the contention' - Nationwide is worse as all it's products are now mediocre...

... in your opinion.