Give them a minute! Two completely separate systems, procedures etc.
Harmonisation takes time. All to say nothing of the mammoth task which will be combining the many systems…
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Not to mention that Nationwide are only just phasing out printing on passbooks with dot-matrix printers!
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As Virgin Money have clearly demonstrated, with some products appearing to be run on legacy Clydesdale systems and others still on Northern Rock.
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They need to do what they said they’d do at the very start i.e. CASS everybody over.
At the very best, the branch staff will have both software(s) on their computers to assist customers. I would never expect the IT systems to be merged fully within the next decade, the only way that it will feel seamless to the customer is if they as said above, CASS everybody over to Nationwide
Really easy way to do It… issue update to Virgin app to replace by Nationwide app and simultaneously CASS everybody over. Behind the scenes, the credit card processing is done by the same place already.
Teensy bit high risk though 
Signed up to a FlexPlus account 2 months ago. They still haven’t taken my monthly charges? is this normal? or do they charge it once a year
They charge it from the month following sign-up. So you get a free first month, or nearly two if you time it right.
It’s charged at the end of the month.
I am on my second month and still no charge, maybe it’s two i am not sure. Either way i’ve just made sure there’s enough money in there to cover it each month
If you opened it at the start of September, they’ll not charge until the end of October.
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When have they said they’d do that?
I don’t think it’d even be an option to do this, as it’d effectively lose everyone’s transaction history.
There’s a lot of data to transfer in these kind of maneouvers and CASS only covers a subset of it.
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Virgin said they were going to do that way back but never did.
They would need to do a kind of CASS+ to keep the transaction history.
On reflection, I would go down this route if I were in charge, albeit rolling the update out gradually over some months. Trial run first, then do the easy cases and work up from there.
It wouldn’t be CASS at all, surely, it’d be a transfer between systems - sort codes and account numbers remain the same (unlike CASS). Not unlike TSB (x2), A&L + Abbey + Bradford & Bingley, Woolwich in to Barclays etc.
Before the merger with CYBG, Virgin didn’t have many current account holders, and the proposal was to migrate them to the CYBG systems using CASS:
Virgin Money takeover by CYBG completed: what it means for you - Which? News
“There are around 100,000 Virgin Money personal current accounts to move, which CYBG plans to do using the automated Current Account Switch Service (CASS).”
As already mentioned, in the end they never did that.
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Sort codes and account numbers would change. At the moment Virgin are spread over three different ranges whilst Nationwide are all 07.
I suspect that COVID messed up their plans for a CASS transfer. That said, it would have lost the transaction history unless they did a kind of CASS+ to take over the history.
Ah of course, I always forget about the legacy Northern Rock/Virgin Money current accounts. I’m surprised there were that many of them, of course the number will have dwindled now and I suspect the number of them being actively used as a current account is very small indeed - I almost thing an N&P/M&S Bank/Tesco Bank style ‘we’re closing your account on x date, you might want to switch before’ type deal would probably be best for them, perhaps with a sweetener if the customer chooses to CASS themselves to Nationwide.
The CYBG account base is way too big to do anything like that. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised given more recent communications if the plan isn’t to offer personal current accounts under both brands/licenses (Nationwide and whatever they rebrand the VM operation as), just on a harmonised system ala Lloyds/BOS.
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They’re never going to keep Virgin as-is since it’s a bit of a mess with so many legacy banking outfits to be supported. Historically, Nationwide have moved all accounts of places they’ve taken over into their own systems.
I suspect that the thing holding it up will be training the Virgin staff on the Nationwide systems. Once that’s done, I’d say it will move very fast indeed.
Given that branch staff aren’t really involved in credit card operations, Virgin have a separate app (no website) for them, and I gather that the backend processing is done by the same place, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the first move across and done within 12 months.
The credit cards seem like an easy win - I had a card change providers before (egg to Barclaycard), and the balance, earned cashback, and direct debit all transferred over to a roughly equivalent product. I got a new card, with instructions to start using it after a certain date, and to update any CPAs with the new number. I think the only thing missing was historical statements, which were available for a while afterwards on the egg website.
That’s assuming they go down that route and don’t do a John Lewis…
