Nationwide is offering a new mortgage deal at 3.99% -- a tasty offer that one hopes rival banks will try to follow. But wait, it’s not as good as it seems.
For a start the five-year deal is only available to those with a 40% deposit – it does nothing for people, like first-time buyers, who don’t already have property wealth. And so it doesn’t do much for the children of members – who just voted to allow CEO Debbie Crosbie to triple her bonus payments, to make sure she is paid like the banker she insists she is not.
There is a pattern here since Crosbie became CEO. There are reward payments to members, which turn out not to go to all members, which is hardly the Nationwide spirit.
There are whizzy new savings deals that top the personal finance charts, but don’t assume just anyone can get one. This is showbiz, not mutuality.
Most of all, there is the extraordinary £2.9 billion takeover of Virgin Money, where Crosbie used to work and which former non-executives describe as a bonus scheme with a bank attached.
As a Virgin Money customer the message that most usually greets you is “We’re having a few problems”. All banks have tech issues, but not so often.
When she was appointed, Crosbie said she was delighted to be working for a mutual organisation, excited to be able to do the right thing.
I’m not sure she gets it. Her job is to see that Nationwide offers better value than banks over 20 and 30 years. Not over 10 days.
Nationwide has been a national treasure for decades, a vital challenge to banking bad behaviour. If that is lost, the punishment for the people responsible should be severe.
Maybe Crosbie will prove the naysayers wrong. At the moment, she worries people who care about mutuality and who think Nationwide has no business spending nearly £3 billion of other people’s money on takeover deals.
