Nationwide customers have been issued a 72-hour alert ahead of a potentially seismic announcement from the building society. It is anticipated that Nationwide will announce another £100 profit-sharing bonus for each of its more than four million eligible members.
Expected Announcement on Thursday
The announcement is tipped for when it posts annual results on Thursday. This will be the fourth consecutive year that Britain's biggest building society has made the payment under its Fairer Share scheme.
Last year, members needed a qualifying current account open on March 31, 2025, combined with either at least £100 in total savings or a minimum of £100 owed on a mortgage on the same date.
Boardroom Election at AGM
Nationwide building society will, on 15 July, have one of its customers up for a boardroom seat at its annual general meeting (AGM). James Sherwin-Smith, a 45-year-old vocal advocate for overhauling the governance of the 142-year-old building society, is running for a position on the board.
According to The Guardian, Sherwin-Smith has spent two years gathering more than 250 peer nominations from scratch. "I didn’t expect the process to be easy, but I also didn’t expect that securing the necessary nominations would be quite this hard," Sherwin-Smith said.
Andrew Johnston, a professor of company law and corporate governance at Warwick University, commented: "Getting 250 people to nominate you is no small hurdle. I suspect they don’t want him on the board because he’s going to just ask lots of awkward questions about stuff that they want to do."
Concerns About Accountability
Johnston added: "The managers of the mutual are insulated from outside pressure. Is it good or bad? The answer is always: it depends. If they’re not being held accountable to anybody, then they could be abusing their position or the quality of their decisions could be poor, and they’re just not having to justify themselves. So it creates a danger of groupthink."
Sherwin-Smith responded: "I am against demutualisation, in common with the stated position of the Nationwide board. As to complexity, building societies rely on their members to accept the accounts, appoint auditors, vote on remuneration reports and policy, and elect directors. To suggest that they are incapable of standing for election to the board that serves their interests is offensive."
