Nationwide Cashbuilder Book Interest (slightly weird behaviour)

hallmark

I have a Nationwide Cashbuilder Book account from way back in the days when passbooks were a common thing.  It had a £100 in it because although I don't use it and was never an activist carpetbagger it seemed sensible to leave a ton there just in case.

Anyway, this account has been visible in online banking for years and likewise on the app, however it never showed any interest payments. I presumed this was simply some facet of the fact it was a passbook account and that it'd need me to visit a branch to get the interest added.

Weirdly, I notice that on 31st December they've added a couple quid interest.  I'm guessing this might be something to do with the upcoming changes they emailed about, whereby this account will convert to an Easy Access Saver with a new account number / sort code.

Here's my question though: The interest that was added related to last year, they HAVEN'T added anything for the nearly 20 years before that but I presume this has been notching up a pound or two interest a year over that time.  So I'm guessing their systems aren't exactly synced up & I'd still need to visit the branch to get that sorted. Does anybody know if that's correct though?

Obviously we are talking about chump change here this is more of academic interest than anything that matters, just thought it was an unusual way of doing things.

premierfella

Definitely worth a complaint, although you may need to reset your expectations even further as to the interest on £100 as that account was paying only 0.1% for the majority of those years. Nationwide's policy of having embarrassingly low interest rates on these type of accounts only changed in the last few years I think.

Also I would avoid bothering the branches - it you even still have a local Nationwide (I don't - they closed all the ones near me many years ago now) they usually need appointments for anything they can't resolve in a few sentences (the recent experience of a family member). Plus the complaint route may get you many times the interest actually due via whatever their standard payout when they make errors is

Kim_13

The Cashbuilder has been paying even more derisory rates than any other account in their range, e.g. Loyalty Saver, and is at 1.80% currently. With £100, it would have taken a rate of 0.01% to get 1p, so if a history of rates can be found, any years below that would probably have been rounded down.

I have the card version with £1 in, as it’s my oldest account with them and received 1p on 31/12/23 and 2p on 1/1/25 (I can’t view any further back within the app.) Perhaps ask Nationwide if the account had been classed as dormant: https://www.nationwide.co.uk/help/banking-help/find-a-lost-account/# . If so, perhaps there was no interest payable while the account was dormant, and the money was automatically reinstated when they changed something as part of their upcoming changes. I bounce a few pounds through mine every so often, so it would not have been classified as such.

droopsnoot

I also have one of these, I don't have that many records (well, I have all the pieces of paper, but I haven't filed them in any meaningful way) but the interest rate notes I have are:

0.10% gross at April 2013
0.25% at September 2015
2.05% from November 2024

There was a major drop in 2008 - my typical annual interest on a fairly static balance went from around £30 down to around £2 the next year, for about the same balance.