Why are we not eligible for a national loyalty payment? We’ve been banking with it since 1974 and have saved £100,000

We have been loyal members of Nationwide Building Society since 1974.

During this time we paid off our mortgage and had a number of savings accounts with them.

My daughter has a savings account and a current account, which means she will receive the recent £100 ‘fairer share’ loyalty bonus, but we will not.

Currently my wife and I have over £100,000 with Nationwide.

We keep the lump sum in our Flex current account and transfer money to our Nationwide Isa account once a tax year – so we have both a current account and a savings account, which we thought was enough to get the £100.

Why didn’t we qualify for a fairer share payment? VR, via email.

Helen Kirrane from This is Money replies: Nationwide announced last month that it would once again make a long-awaited, fairer share payment to eligible members.

From June 13 to June 28, £385 million will be paid out to 3.85 million members in the form of one-off payments of £100.

The construction company giant made pre-tax profits of £1.77 billion in the year to April. As a result, it said it would share some of its profits with members who bank and borrow with it, or who bank and save with it.

But eligibility is the key word here. Nationwide set strict conditions under which members would be eligible for the £100 payments.

At a very basic level, to receive the £100 fairer share payment, members must have a national current account as well as one of the following:

• At least £100 in a national savings account or Isa
• As of March 31, 2024, there is at least £100 left on a national mortgage

You have already paid off your mortgage, so your eligibility for a loyalty payment depends on whether you have the right type of checking account and at least €100 in the right type of savings account at the end of the day on December 31. March.

But it doesn’t end there. Each of the eligible current accounts also had its own conditions that needed to be met to receive the bonus, so you would need to meet these conditions, and have at least £100 in a Nationwide savings account or Isa.

Andrew Hagger, personal finance expert at Money Comms, replies: You may not have met Nationwide’s current account criteria.

It appears that Nationwide wants to reward loyal customers who use their checking account for monthly withdrawals and withdrawals, rather than people who have a dormant account or do little activity because they use a checking account at another bank for their daily activities. day banking.

Helen Kirrane replies: You told me that you have a Nationwide Flex checking account. You do not use this for your daily expenses, but for a fixed amount of € 100,000. Every year you transfer some money to an Isa to get a better interest rate.

The accounts eligible for a Fairer Share payment were:

• FlexPlus – This account requires a monthly payment of €13.

• FlexOne, FlexStudent or FlexGraduate – These are child and student accounts and are therefore not relevant to you.

• FlexAccount, FlexDirect or FlexBasic – These had specific terms and conditions, so this is where you may have been caught.

FlexAccount, FlexDirect or FlexBasic current accounts were eligible to receive the £100 bonus.

But you had to meet one of two conditions associated with these accounts.

In two of the three months January 2024, February 2024 and March 2024 you should have received at least £500 into your current account – and transfers from other national accounts you hold do not count.

You also had to make at least two payments from your checking account.

So you should have received a total of £1,000 into the current account from a non-national account, and made no fewer than four payments in two of those three months.

If you met none of these conditions, you could also have qualified by making at least 10 checking account payments in two of the three months of January 2024, February 2024, and March 2024 – for a total of 20 checking account payments. the bill in two months.

These conditions would not have applied to anyone who switched to one of these accounts between January 1, 2024 and March 31, 2024.

If you had one of these current accounts and didn’t meet any of these conditions, I’m afraid that even if you had multiple Nationwide savings accounts or Isas and a £100,000 current account balance, you wouldn’t have been eligible for the £100 fairer share payment – despite being a loyal Nationwide member since 1974.

James Blower, founder of Savings Guru responds: It seems your reader missed this because you are solely holding a current account to fund your Isa, and not using it according to the criteria specified by Nationwide. This is why you missed the amount, but your daughter and son-in-law received payments.

The only options I think you have are to complain to Nationwide – either you think a mistake has been made and you qualify, or you think it’s unfair and Nationwide should give you an ex-gratia pay for your loyalty instead.

The challenge for any bank offering such a payment is trying to make it fair.

If you give it to every member, people who miss the cutoff by a day are angry, and those who have been customers for decades are angry that those who have been customers for five minutes get the same payout. There is no easy way to do this.

Nationwide has opted to require £100 in a savings account or outstanding on a mortgage by the end of March, and maintain one of seven current accounts in its name with additional criteria for the payments made into them, or the fees paid. for its use.

In short, Nationwide tries to reward customers who are both regular checking account holders and savings or mortgage customers.

A spokesperson for Nationwide Building Society responded: All our members share in our success and the fairer share payment nationwide is just one way we reward members who choose us for their everyday banking relationship.

Last year we returned a record £2.2 billion to members in total. Criteria have been established for the fairer share payment, requiring both a qualifying current account and a qualifying savings account or mortgage.