3.4 million bank customers to receive £100 straight into their accounts

A building society in the street pays millions of customers £100. Those who meet the eligibility criteria will get the money paid directly into their accounts.

Nationwide today launched this year’s Fairer Share as it announced its accounts. It has announced that it will pay the bonus to eligible members in June this year, totaling around £385m.

To be eligible, members will need to hold an eligible current account plus an eligible savings or mortgage product. A person will need to have held the account on March 31 to be eligible and still have the account open in June.

Those who qualify – believed to be 3.4 million people – will be contacted between now and the end of May.

Debbie Crosbie, chief executive of Nationwide, said: “Our strong financial performance means we are able to offer more ways for our members to benefit from our success. This is only possible because we are member owned and all our profits are reinvested for their benefit. We’ve been very pleased with how robust our corporate customers have been, we’ve seen arrears remain low, very light growth, but we’ve seen people continue to spend.”

Fairer rate payment: The eligibility checker can be found here.

In short, people are eligible if they have:

• Current Account: To be an eligible current account, your account must have been opened on March 31, 2024. See here for other criteria. Qualifying members must still have a checking account in June.
• Savings: You will have had eligible savings if you had at least £100 in total in one or more personal savings accounts or cash ISAs with Nationwide at the end of any day in March 2024.
• Mortgage: To be an eligible mortgage you must owe us at least £100 on your residential mortgage nationwide on 31 March 2024

The cash will be paid into your Nationwide current account. You’ll just need to look for the ‘National Fairer Rate Payment’ code on your bank statement.

The company, like rival banks, said the benefits of higher interest rates were largely offset by a highly competitive mortgage market throughout the year.

He also said the housing market remained subdued in the face of higher borrowing costs. Chris Rhodes, Nationwide’s chief financial officer, revealed that the mortgage market has fallen by around 27% in the past year, with buy-to-lease loans down by almost 50%.

“As we look forward, we expect the market to gradually improve, both as affordability improves due to falling interest rates and with wage inflation outstripping CPI (Consumer Price Index) inflation,” he said .

“But it’s going to be gradual and as we look at the house price data, it’s going to be a bit nebulous.” According to the lender’s own forecasts, house prices could fall by 1.1% between December 2023 and December 2024.

Meanwhile, the company announced earlier in the year that it plans to buy rival lender Virgin Money in a deal worth around £2.9bn. It said on Thursday that the acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Ms Crosbie stressed that the “vast majority of members are very happy” with the deal, which will see it further enter the business banking market. Nationwide did not give its members a vote on the purchase, which Ms Crosbie said it was not required to do under building society rules or its internal governance rules.