- Nationwide paid 3.85m members a £100 fairer share payment in June
Nationwide Building Society could pay out another £100 Fairer Share payment next year, after strong hints from its chief executive in recent weeks.
Britain’s building society received a £2.3billion windfall from its £2.9billion takeover of Virgin Money in October.
As such, Debbie Crosbie revealed it is ‘well positioned’ to repeat a £100 ‘Fairer Share’ payment to eligible customers.
Over the summer, Nationwide paid 3.85million members £100 each, dishing out a total of £385million after announcing pre-tax profit of £1.77billon in the year to April 2024.
The year before that, it paid out £344million to 3.44milion members. Any potential payment next year could be its largest ever.
But more than 12million of Nationwide’s 16million members missed out on the £100 bonus in June – some 76 per cent.
That’s because Nationwide had strict eligibility criteria for who could receive the bonus.
Nationwide unveiled a £100 fairer share bonus to 3.85m members in June
On a very basic level, to receive the most recent £100 Fairer Share payment, members needed to hold an eligible Nationwide current account, as well as one of the following:
- At least £100 in a Nationwide savings account or Isa on any day in March 2024
- Owe at least £100 on a Nationwide mortgage on 31 March 2024
But it doesn’t end there. The eligible current accounts were:
- FlexPlus – this account requires a monthly payment of £18 to hold it.
- FlexOne, FlexStudent or FlexGraduate – these are childrens’ and student accounts
- FlexAccount, FlexDirect or FlexBasic – these had their own specific conditions
To be a qualifying current account, your account must have been open on 31 March 2024.
But if you held one of the FlexAccount, FlexDirect or FlexBasic accounts, you needed to have met one of two conditions which were attached to these accounts.
In two out of three months of January 2024, February 2024 and March 2024, you would have needed to receive at least £500 into your current account – and transfers in from other Nationwide accounts you hold do not count.
In addition, you needed to make at least two payments out of your current account.
So you would have needed to receive a total of £1,000 into the current account from a non-Nationwide account, and make no less than four payments across two of those three months.
If you did not meet any of those conditions, you could also have qualified by making at least 10 payments out of the current account in two out of three months of January 2024, February 2024 and March 2024 – for a total of 20 payments out of the account across two months.
These conditions did not apply to any new customers who switched their current account to Nationwide between 1 January 2024 and 31 March 2024.
If you have had your Nationwide account for some time, this means you would have needed to have all your ducks in a row by the end of December to be sure you qualify.
Once these criteria were met, customers received the £100 bonus in their current account between 13 and 28 June.
Nationwide confirmed that Virgin Money’s customers will not be eligible for any fairer share payment going forward.
Nationwide is currently offering a £175 cash bribe to new customers who switch to one of its current accounts, meaning new Nationwide customers could stand to make £275 between now and June 2025… if the Fairer Share payment returns.
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