December 2025 – The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has imposed a fine of £44mn upon the Nationwide Building Society for lack of proper financial control between October 2016 and July 2021. The fine was originally £62,969,297 but was reduced by 30% for early settlement.
The Nationwide failed to address “unacceptable” known deficiencies in its systems for the prevention of financial crime among its 10 million personal current account holders.
The regulator said the failings were “exacerbated” by the fact that Nationwide knew some of its members were using their personal accounts for business purposes — exposing it to fraudulent claims on the government’s pandemic furlough scheme that launched in 2020.
In one case, Nationwide failed to detect £27.3mn in fraudulent Covid-19 furlough payments flowing through a customer’s personal account, including £26mn deposited over eight days.
The Chief Finance Officers during this period were Muir Mathieson (2016-2019) followed by Chris Rhodes (2019-2024) who has been promoted to Chief Executive of Virgin Money.
The Nationwide response was “We do not believe that these controls issues caused financial loss to any of our customers …….” But the members will have to suffer the fine!
Nationwide was fined £980,000 (reduced by 30%) in 2007 for breaching Principle 3 of the FSA’s Principles for Businesses (requiring firms to take reasonable care to organise and control their affairs responsibly and effectively, with adequate risk management systems).
See FT Report