Walk down almost any High street in the UK and you will more than likely see a branch of the Nationwide Building Society. This is not surprising since Nationwide Building Society is the largest building society in the world today.
A member of the Building Societies Association, Nationwide has its administration centre in Northampton and its headquarters in Swindon, Wiltshire. The Nationwide is the only UK building society with the ability to clear its own cheques and is the nation’s second largest mortgage lender and savings provisioner.
The Origins of the Nationwide Building Society
The Nationwide has its beginnings in Wiltshire an Northampton in the 1840s. By the 1960s, the Co-operative Permanent Building Society (as Nationwide was known at that time) had more than 1 million society members and significant assets approaching £700 million. A rebranding exercise in 1970 saw the creation of the Nationwide Building Society.
In 1987 Nationwide merged with the Anglia Building Society, and subsequently became known as the Nationwide Anglia Building Society. However “Anglia” was removed from its title in 1992.
In 1991, Nationwide became the first building society to issue the Visa/Delta debit card. Six years later, in 1997 Nationwide launched the first internet banking service. In 1998 members of the Nationwide Building Society voted to demutualise the society and float it on the London Stock Exchange after members’ expectations of a windfall led to them being labelled carpet baggers by the media in the UK. This attempt failed and shortly after a vote was taken to turn the Nationwide Building Society into a bank: an idea that was overturned at the vote by a narrow margin. At present the Nationwide BS is committed to staying mutual.
Nationwide from 2000 Onwards
The Nationwide Building Society launched an scathing attack on charges for using cashpoint machines in 1999, which resulted the following year in free withdrawal for all bank and building society customers from bank owned cash machines throughout the UK. Throughout all this change Nationwide continued to grow and by 2004 became Britain’s fourth largest mortgage lender, with one million mortgage customers. These figures outstripped even Barclays Bank.
In 2007 Nationwide significantly increased its assets when it merged with the Portman Building Society, creating combined assets of more than £160 billion. In September 2008, the Nationwide BS also subsumed the Cheshire and Derbyshire Building Societies, which had fared badly in the burgeoning economic crisis, although they each have retained their trading names within the Nationwide Group.
In March 2009 Nationwide acquired the failing Dunfermline Building Society. During the economic crisis beginning in 2007, the Nationwide was committed to safeguarding the mutual sector.
Nationwide’s Financial Presence
Nowadays, the Nationwide Building Society provides its financial services directly through 680 branches and 200 agencies. Nationwide’s website attracts more than two and a half million visitors a month and one point six million of those are active internet banking users.