My Wife and I use our Joint Nationwide account for all of our monthly household direct debits and day to day food expenses. We didnāt get Ā£100 out of the Nationwide and weāve funnelled many Ā£1000ās into the account for almost 15 years. Obviously, weāre not special enough
You are of course absolutely correct. Their current savings offerings are absolutely pathetic. The 8 percent offering is on Ā£200 a month only which in my pointless opinion isnāt honestly that great at all in the grand scheme of things. I currently save my entire monthly take home salary and shove it all in Tandem at 5 percent (I live off my pension). Nationwide instant access is half Tandemās rate. This is why I donāt have any Nationwide savings products.
I am however, a great fan of the insurance package, so I wonāt be dumping Nationwide any decade soon
As for the rebrand, well actually, I quite like it. Itās completely inoffensive and looks fresh in my opinion. So itās not for everyone and the ultra grey doddery stick waving customers are no doubt appalled, but as with everything, folks will live with it or move on.
Why not shove Ā£200 in Nationwide and the rest in Tandem? Doing so would yield ~Ā£103 in interest whereas that same investment sat in Tandem for the same period would earn ~Ā£65.
Leaving easy money on the table, again.
Or, go a step further and shove the whole lot in different regular savers, with an easy access rate to catch them as they mature (and then drip feed once more).
To be fair though, with the amount of personal savings I currently have, my annual interest for my personal tax allowance on savings, comes in at just under the Ā£1000 threshold as a basic rate taxpayer. If I try to eek out any more in savings, Iām going to be paying tax on my savings and I just canāt be arsed with that
Your savings arenāt taxed, the interest you earn on them is taxed at the same rate as all your other earnings.
I donāt understand this position either, you still take home the lion share of what you put in and there is no āfaffā, itās either captured through PAYE or sent as a bill.
I donāt hate the rebrand but just missed it opening an account card wise. I do, in an odd way, quite like how simple the app is. There isnāt much wordy clutter when payments come in and out (like with tsb - upper and lower case etc - or even rbs in the way it shows the payment reference at first)
App looks the same for now? Edit: I hadnāt updated it lol, app still fairly simple. Donāt mind it for facilitating the odd payments etc
Iām not trying to be negative, but we should set expectations low. Letās face it - they are a bit like First Direct, always promising improvements but little tangible change ever materialises.
So far the only feature theyāve launched for three years, as far as I can remember, is a basic gambling block that every major bank has had for ages.
I notice that theyāre still branding the legacy Select card are a āCredit Cardā whilst branding the current as a āMember Cardā They seem to prefer to have a tranche of legacy products rather than just simplifying their range.
Even their current product range is confused - take the FlexDirect and FlexAccount - merging them would cost very little as the go-to interest rate is trash at 1% up to Ā£1500 and lots wouldnāt be eligible for any new account benefits.
The Member Card and Select Card have differing benefits (which have 0% FX and lower APR respectively), as do FlexAccount and FlexDirect (which have branch access and in-credit interest respectively).
They are far from alone in having legacy products no longer available to new applicants - Bank of Scotland have a whole load of them from when their product offer was aligned with Halifaxās rather than Lloydsā; TSB and Lloyds still have legacy products relating to their product range pre-separation; Santander has 123, 123 Lite and Select which are all NLA; Amex have a whole family of Charge Cards which are NLA but wonāt stop for existing applicants; Barclaycard have the Hilton cardsā¦ honestly itās harder to find financial institutions which donāt have a few skeletons still lurking about.
