Nationwide payment: how can you get building society’s £100 offer? Details on Fairer Share scheme

A high street building society will give out £100 to millions of people this summer.

Nationwide has announced that its Fairer Share Payment will return this year, after its debut last summer. It means £385m will be dished out to who use Nationwide for their everyday banking and also have a qualifying savings or mortgage product. It will be paid into the accounts of eligible members in June.

It comes as Nationwide has revealed lower earnings over the past year - but said it handed out a record amount of cash to members. It reported a statutory pre-tax profit of £1.8bn for the year to April 4, down about a fifth from the £2.2bn reported this time last year.

It said the drop was largely due to last June’s Fairer Share payment, which saw £344m handed out to members, as well as passing on interest rate rises to savers.

The society, like rival high street banks, said that the benefits of higher interest rates were largely offset by a fiercely competitive mortgage market throughout the year. It also said the housing market has remained subdued in the face of higher borrowing costs.

Chris Rhodes, Nationwide’s finance chief, revealed that the mortgage market was down about 27 per cent over the latest year, with buy-to-let lending plunging by nearly a half.

“As we look forward, we do expect the market to gradually improve, both as affordability improves from falling interest rates, and with wage inflation running ahead of CPI (Consumer Prices Index) inflation,” he said. “But it is going to be gradual, and as we look at house price data it is going to be a bit lumpy.”

According to the lender’s own forecasts, house prices could decline by 1.1 per cent between December 2023 and December 2024.

Debbie Crosbie, Nationwide’s chief executive, said that consumers have been more resilient than previously expected. “We’ve been really pleased with how robust the customers in our society have been, we’ve seen arrears remain low, a very slight uptick, but we’ve seen people continuing to spend,” she said.

The company announced earlier in the year that it plans to buy rival lender Virgin Money in a deal worth about £2.9bn. It said today that the acquisition is expected to complete towards the end of this year.

Ms Crosbie stressed that the “large majority of members are very happy” with the deal, which will see it further enter the business banking market. Nationwide has not offered its members a vote over the acquisition, which Ms Crosbie said it is not required to do under building society rules or its internal governance rules.

It is also offering a new savings product, the Member Exclusive Bond, which will have a rate of 5.5% AER for 18 months and will be available to all members. Its current one-year fixed bond is 4.25%.