Nationwide has announced it is returning a record £2.8bn in value to members as it unveils its full-year financial results following a merger with Virgin Money.
The UK’s biggest building society has reported its best growth in net mortgage lending and record lending in the first quarter of 2025, the best results across the whole UK banking sector.
Over the last month, £1bn was returned directly to eligible members and a further £1.8bn has been returned in better-than-average rates and incentives.
In March, the banking group gave away £50 to 12.3m customers as an early Easter present to thank them for their support during their 2024 merger with Virgin Money, as well as returning money through their Fairer Share scheme.
Debbie Crosbie, Nationwide’s chief executive, said: “Nationwide has had an outstanding twelve months. We returned a record £2.8bbn in value to our members and recorded our highest ever year for growth in mortgage lending and retail deposit balances, and we remain first for customer service.”
As well as ranking first for customer satisfaction for the 13th year in a row, retail deposits also grew by a record £14bn and statutory profit before tax rose to £2.3bn.
Last October, Ms Crosbie oversaw the completion of the biggest merger in the industry since the financial crisis with the £2.9bn takeover, and has also pledged not to close branches for a further three years.
In its first set of financial results since the acquisition, Nationwide said trading performance was ahead of expectations, with a continued increase in business lending and a return to growth in mortgage net lending.
The creation of 370 new roles at Virgin Money has also improved customer service, while the building society has also seen more than one in four students choosing Nationwide for their banking.
Unlike other banks, the building society has pledged to keep all of its nearly 700 branches open until at least the start of 2028.
New data from the group revealed that nearly 200,000 more customers used its branches in the financial year to the end of March, compared with the prior year, and more people switched to Nationwide than any other bank.
Despite the number of banks on the high street dwindling rapidly, Nationwide saw an increase of four per cent in people visiting their branches, and 40 per cent of ISAs were opened through face-to-face contact with staff.
In contrast, Lloyds has been making sweeping cuts to its network – with the most recently announced closures to 136 branches taking place over the next year.
Others have been drastically trimming their network, such as Santander announcing in March it would be closing more than a fifth of its high street branches, bringing it down to 349 across Britain.
