“Nationwide will pay £15m in annual royalties to Virgin Group to use the brand name over the first four years, before paying £250m to exit the contract, and eventually phasing out Virgin Money’s name entirely.” - from the press info released.
So the Virgin Money brand to exist for at least 6 years in some form.
Which is what I remember them saying. From what they’ve said, it seems they will remove the Virgin branding and rebrand that part of the business to something else.
Rebrand to Nationwide.
As I said before, I don’t think they’ve said that anywhere. Correct me if I am wrong, but no one has been able to give any evidence of them rebranding to nationwide yet, so based on what we know, we simply don’t know what the rebrand will be.
Think it’s pretty clear tbh.
How so?
Company A buys company B.
Company A pays some running fee for company Bs name.
Company A then pays final sum to remove company Bs name.
Company A fully owns company B.
Company B becomes company A in entirety.
"Bringing the established business banking services of Virgin Money into the Nationwide Group will give us a broader and more diverse product range. "
It seems the rebrand could be something Nationwide styled but potentially still run as a bank, separate from the building society.
All of this seems more than 6 years away though.
Not unless you’re a Virgin Money Shareholder. Nobody else got a vote on it.
I mean. it’s worth it, if you can sign in - I am logged on via the app, but I can’t seem to be able to apply there. My login attempts were apparently unsuccessful - somehow, says my customer ID is wrong (it’s not) and have locked me out
Not sure it’s worth it for a “free” £25 of so in a years time
sigh I’ll try it when I get home
The app gives me a time frame that the website doesn’t, design and communication is on point 
Nationwide does votes, there was a ballot paper for various things and within that a booklet about the merger. The vote may well not have had anything to do with the merger, but the booklet exists. Because I got it.
Edit: Found it. So I think it fits actually quite well with the concept of long term possible complete merge, but feels long long term and not short term.
It’s also worth noting they won’t close Virgin Money branches in a town even if it’s close to a Nationwide branch until 2028 so I can’t imagine a complete merge until at least then.
I think most things will move much earlier than six years. First to merge will likely be current account and savings, assuming that they’re going to use a rebranded version of Virgin Money. The Virgin app seems to do most things that Nationwide do so shouldn’t need a major upgrade to do the rest. Alongside that, Virgin would need to move to the FlexPlus insurance.
Next would be to integrate the credit cards which are on different apps in Virgin and maybe that would hold up the current account/savings merger as Nationwide have them in one app.
Then the mortgage products.
Finally the investment products, although Nationwide previously dropped out of that market.
Of course it does votes for the AGM, as do all building societies, but there was no vote on the takeover of Virgin Money. Your previous post said that you thought the vote was about the merger:
" we got something through the post about the merger (I think it was voting on it)"
Nationwide have said right from the beginning that members weren’t going to have a vote on the merger
Yep - I said I think. I then clarified.
I think its easy to confuse the front end of the consumer apps with whats happening in the background.
Virgin run the current accounts on old tech, while Nationwide have been replatforming.
Nationwides credit cards are also semi third party as it is. The integration could go the way of MBNA in my mind.
Closed my nationwide reg saver and opened virgins as I prefer not having withdrawal limits.
Both Virgin and Nationwide use the same back end credit card processor, so in theory that integration would be relatively easy.
Didn’t know that Nationwide had been changing platforms. If that’s the case then it could be a move for everything to their platform as it already integrates current, savings and credit.
Declined for a current account so no regular saver for me. I have been with Virgin so may have not liked me from then. No big loss really.
Having used the VM app now for a few days, it is still as guff as it was years ago. Knew there was a reason I left them lol
It looks like a Kids first bank, imo - designed by a 5 year old
