The City joke goes like this. You can be absolutely certain what a bank with spare capital will do next. The only question is: up which wall.
Nationwide Building Society is not like that. It is an institution for the ages, a force for good in a world not overburdened with them.
It doesn’t chuck our money about willy-nilly. It is a steward of it.
Since 1884 it has been true to its roots. Its mission is to make it possible for ordinary folk to build up savings, to get a house they can afford, and to keep them in it, whatever the economic weather.
Attempts to turn it into just another shareholder owned bank were resisted with vigour, and not a little pride. Members rallied around management to say to the schemers: get stuffed.
Its mere existence is an affront to the big banks, especially its former building society rivals such as Alliance & Leicester, Bradford & Bingley, Abbey National and the rest, who had one thing in common at least.
They converted to banks and promptly went bust when the 2007 financial crash hit, or got sold to the big beasts, disappearing along the way.
The notion that they would be more competitive on the stock market, reward investors as well as customers, unravelled at almost comical speed once trouble hit.
Nationwide rose above all this as it always has. If some flash start-up with whizzy marketing offered unsustainable teaser deals on savings or mortgages, Nationwide shrugged.
We’re not in that game, it said. Over a lifetime we will be better for you and your family.
Be a rate-chase tart if you like. Then come back to us when the tarts turn out to be just that.
Nationwide doesn’t have to – indeed is not required to – chase market share. It is supposed to sell what seems sensible right now and for the future. If profits fall, so what?
All of which makes some of its recent moves a little concerning.
Under new chief executive Debbie Crosbie it has gone for headlines. For a start there are ridiculous TV ads you can’t have missed with actor Dominic West playing a parody of a beastly bank boss, Gordon Gekko as if he were from Eton.
No present UK bank CEO is remotely like that person. The ads aren’t even funny.
I asked Nationwide how much it is paying West for these ads. It isn’t answering that, or much else just now.
It was also offering a savings account paying 8%, which is about as rate-tarty as you can get.
It won’t last; it’s just a come hither, before the rate gets cut to something more sustainable.
Nationwide Building Society is supposed to be sustainable right from the get-go and to have little truck with Hollywood (one wonders if Dominic West wonders what he signed up for and wishes he hadn’t).
Once you’ve started asking these questions, others follow. Is the commitment to keeping branches open just a sign that its digital offering is miles behind the competition?
How many of those branches have restricted opening hours, just like, say, Barclays? Are the staff in branches just handling calls like in any bank call centre? So are they branches in name only?
When the Branch Promise ends in 2026 what then? The trend is for branches to close because customers are using them less. By the time your commitment ends in that will have accelerated - won’t you have to close a whole load of branches almost immediately?
Crosbie got paid £3.5 million in her first ten months at Nationwide, generally reckoned to be the biggest ever pay deal for a building society boss. What is mutual about that? Would members vote in favour of that pay if they even had the chance?
The pity of this is that is Crosbie is excellent. Sincere. Likable. Keen to do the right thing. It just looks like she’s trying to make a splash, which is not what the society is about.
Nationwide has 16 million members, an astonishing testament to its success. We like it as it is. Tomorrow (Friday) it will report half-year results that we trust will be as solid as usual.
No accounting trickery. No write-offs on bad loans to curious commercial property outfits. No funny business with derivatives and other financial chicanery beloved of the big banks the society exists to oppose.
Perhaps we should end here with a plea.
Dear Nationwide: Be yourself. Keep Calm. Carry on. Forever.
Simon English is the Financial Editor of the Evening Standard.
