Nationwide Fairer Share

Nasqueron

Hattie627 said:

Just reading this thread has reminded me of the possibility of the Nationwide Fairer Share payment in 2026.

I'm going to start paying in £1K per month to my flex current account from October. If they are going to tighten things in 2026, I could see the monthly current account deposit requirement going up from £500 to £1000 and also making it 6 months (October to March) instead of January to March as in 2024 and 2025. Just my musings.

I agree on that, though I suspect they might do something like 3 payments instead of 2. I think the £500 is less likely to change, they want to be seen to be helping members and plenty of people don't have £1000 to dump in without doing lots of fiddly transactions and plenty of others don't get that much income full stop even if they use the account as a main one. Making it higher would move away from their ethos of being there for everyone, and would be more of a bonus for being better off.

boingy

Of course, by only declaring the criteria after the qualifying period they are in the cushy position of being able to tweak the requirements and know exactly how much it will cost them and how many customers are included.

I imagine they have already looked at how many accounts are doing the bare minimum to qualify but I'm pretty sure that will be a tiny percentage of the total so maybe they are just not bothered. 

Exodi

boingy said:

Of course, by only declaring the criteria after the qualifying period they are in the cushy position of being able to tweak the requirements and know exactly how much it will cost them and how many customers are included.

I do not see that there is a reasonable alternative. Obviously declaring the exact criteria in advance would be abused to the high heavens. They may as well post £100 to every British citizen.

'Genuine' Nationwide members would rightfully feel aggrieved that Nationwide might provide an instruction manual on how random people could share in the profits that genuine members may feel they created. It's bad enough that countless people on this forum already game the Fairer Share payment by specifically transferring £500 by Standing Order every month into an otherwise empty Nationwide current account before immediately transferring it out again by Standing Order in two chunks back to the original account and simultaneously housing exactly £100 in a savings account (or just lining up a switch of a spare current account during the eligibility period and parking £100 in savings).

Imagine if you didn't even need to be proactive about it. I could already imagine the headlines "easy hack for free £100".

Naturally they'd also need to know how much it will cost them in advance else it would be an absolute accounting disaster - they'd have no idea on uptake/cost.

(I'm not saying you suggested that they should provide the criteria in advance, just challenging the characterisation that they've put themselves in this 'cushy position' when it realistically can't work any other way).

boingy said:

I imagine they have already looked at how many accounts are doing the bare minimum to qualify but I'm pretty sure that will be a tiny percentage of the total so maybe they are just not bothered. 

I'm minded to agree with this.

If 1% of accounts (for example) are suspected of gaming the system, they may decide it's better to prevent any drama and let is slide, rather than tighten eligibility and and increase the payment to £101. I doubt many people would care about the different between £100 and £101 but you can bet the 1% that slipped through the net would have something to say about it (again, I remember this forum before absolutely flooded with people seething they were not eligible, multiple 30+ page threads on it).

But who knows what they will do.

Personally I think they should tighten eligibility - only requiring 2 payments in 2 months out of 3 seems incredibly lax. Even more so considering transfers in and out have counted.

Confused_Dog

Remember the Virgin Money current account, savings account and mortgage account holders are now on the books.

If Nationwide want to remain true to their ethos as a building society, at some point the Virgin Money customers have to become members.  Otherwise, you end up with a situation with a two tier customer base.  The likes of Halifax and Alliance & Leicester who converted had this to a point, customers who opened an account after a particular date were classed as depositors rather members and thus were not entitled to shares when conversion took place.  However they were converting and at the time the likelihood of members turning down the offer of shares was small, even though as we now know conversion was not in the long-term interest of the former society members.

The Fairer Share payment may bring this to a head if it went ahead next year, especially if the press make it a big issue.

clairec666

Confused_Dog said:

Remember the Virgin Money current account, savings account and mortgage account holders are now on the books.

If Nationwide want to remain true to their ethos as a building society, at some point the Virgin Money customers have to become members.  Otherwise, you end up with a situation with a two tier customer base.  The likes of Halifax and Alliance & Leicester who converted had this to a point, customers who opened an account after a particular date were classed as depositors rather members and thus were not entitled to shares when conversion took place.  However they were converting and at the time the likelihood of members turning down the offer of shares was small, even though as we now know conversion was not in the long-term interest of the former society members.

The Fairer Share payment may bring this to a head if it went ahead next year, especially if the press make it a big issue.

Nationwide will gradually migrate all Virgin accounts onto their system, but it's not clear at what point they will become "members" and therefore entitled to the fairer share payment. At the moment they still use the Virgin website to log in, and it might be pot luck as to when they get switched over.

Not sure the press can make too much of a storm out of it, there will be some disgruntled rumblings from people who have missed out, or Nationwide may pre-empt this by making them all members automatically.

WillPS

clairec666 said:

Confused_Dog said:

Remember the Virgin Money current account, savings account and mortgage account holders are now on the books.

If Nationwide want to remain true to their ethos as a building society, at some point the Virgin Money customers have to become members.  Otherwise, you end up with a situation with a two tier customer base.  The likes of Halifax and Alliance & Leicester who converted had this to a point, customers who opened an account after a particular date were classed as depositors rather members and thus were not entitled to shares when conversion took place.  However they were converting and at the time the likelihood of members turning down the offer of shares was small, even though as we now know conversion was not in the long-term interest of the former society members.

The Fairer Share payment may bring this to a head if it went ahead next year, especially if the press make it a big issue.

Nationwide will gradually migrate all Virgin accounts onto their system, but it's not clear at what point they will become "members" and therefore entitled to the fairer share payment. At the moment they still use the Virgin website to log in, and it might be pot luck as to when they get switched over.

They're quite clear about it actually:

"We are preparing to transfer the assets and liabilities of Virgin Money's main operating subsidiary, Clydesdale Bank PLC, into Nationwide, which we expect to complete in 2026/27"

Source: https://www.nationwide.co.uk/-/assets/nationwidecouk/documents/about/how-we-are-run/results-and-accounts/2024-2025/annual-report-and-accounts-2025.pdf

Where you log in does not determine whether or not you are a mutual member; that will ultimately be determined by the legal entity which holds your deposits/debts (unless the account is determined to be a non-membership one).

Whether such accounts become eligible for future Fairer Share's is entirely at the discretion of Nationwide. It doesn't even have to be limited to members if they chose for it to be so.

Money_Grabber13579

IMO, I wouldn’t be surprised if the amount of the Fairer Share payment reduces or the eligibility criteria is tightened. The payment was made possible by Nationwide significantly increasing their profits, which largely arose as a result of increasing interest rates. Now rates are reducing again, it doesn’t seem unlikely that profits will also reduce unless Nationwide can take action to somehow maintain their margin.

Nasqueron

It's a cost / benefit thing, the publicity and getting more members and more money from savers is perhaps worth it. I was on holiday once with a guy who worked for Red Bull, he had asked their marketing department about the costs of running an F1 team and their numbers said the publicity and "free" advertising more than outweighed the cost of running a team. Nationwide gave away £400m in 2025, they must feel it's worth it even if they reduce the amount or make it a bit harder to get to encourage "genuine" customers.

WillPS

It's a strong marketing gimmick which they can push throughout the year; must be a billion or more they've given away now? 

If we see another autumn/winter campaign pushing recent generosity I'd take that as a very strong hint there's more to come.