Yes, as long as you already have or open a current account with them
Oooo tempted instead of firing it into nationwide reg saver and RBS reg saver
I wouldn’t replace my RBS/NatWest standing order because 6% forever is eventually going to yield better returns than 10% for a year.
Nationwide, definitely. That said, I’m not touching Virgin Money given they didn’t much like me in one of their previous lives.
Didnt know they have 0 fees on transactions abroad as well which is handy.
Decided to go for it. Theres no real harm in having many accounts and it isn’t a hassle to manage them. Just need to set up a standing order and forget about it.
Wow, that is an amazing rate, especially seeing as the BoE just dropped the interest rate to 5%.
I’ve just opened a regular saver. A bit of a faff going through online banking and millions of questions compared to the likes of Monzo et al (why is that not in the app!?), but it wasn’t too painful in the end. I can cope for that rate.
That 6% is really only 4.8% if you’re paying tax on it and several ISAs beat that at the moment, without the regular savings restrictions.
Not everyone pays tax on savings though; and we’re talking regular savers anyway.
I do wonder what will happen to Virgin Money’s products, some of which do have features that are better than Nationwide’s offering. Will Nationwide want to annoy VM’s customers by taking these away?
Use Lloyds Banking Group as a model.
The brands can still exist and both run their own current, savings and lending accounts.
Nationwide may improve their offering alongside it, keeping the two names trading but bringing the products in line with each other.
That would be one option. Wonder what they would rename Virgin Money as if that were the case.
They have said that Virgin Money will stay for a few years until eventually being rebranded to Nationwide.
As a mutual they not in a rush to merge the two like others might but that’s the end product.
Not doubting you, but where have they said that? Just want to see exactly what they said
The Nationwide app team could probably learn a bit from the VM app team.
Makes me wonder if apps remain clunky and such, all just to avoid the tsb disaster.
It’s in the takeover offer details. You should able to access it still on their website.
I only ask because from what I read a few months ago, they never stated that they wanted to actually merge them together, but did say they want to get rid of the Virgin brand. It is possible they have changed their plan since I last looked though.
There’s the integration bit from the very first press release. The branding bit is elsewhere but I’m not doing all the work
From what I can tell, nothing has changed and I cant see anything that refers to branding except removing the Virgin branding. Integration could just be in a similar ways to Lloyds and NatWest - the brands are separate but the systems aren’t so you can go to the other brands branch and it still works.
I’m not saying they wont completely merge them, I just can’t see anything that says they will.
I don’t think they’ve explicitly said they will merge the products, but they have done that in all previous takeovers. The sole exception is that they retained two buy to let mortgage companies but even there one is being run down and doesn’t take on new customers.
My thinking is that they will move to the Virgin Money current account platform as it is much more functional.
I don’t have it to hand but we got something through the post about the merger (I think it was voting on it) where they explicitly said it would remain two distinct brands.
There’s nothing to suggest they will rebrand at all.