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A Virgin Money customer has complained about not being able to access the same mortgage deals as Nationwide mortgage borrowers, – despite the building society’s takeover of Virgin last autumn.
Nationwide’s £2.9billion takeover of rival Virgin Money was so successful Nationwide gave all its qualifying members a £50 bonus. However not all customers appear to be happy. One woman told the Guardian how they had hoped to get a better mortgage deal now the companies were under the same umbrella but told the newspaper she felt like a second class citizen.
The woman told the Guardian’s Rupert Jones she looked at what mortagges transfer rates were being offered to Nationwide customers with the same amount of equity.
She found a cheaper Virgin Money two year fix of 3.84%, but the fee was £1,999. If she only wanted to pay a fee of £999 she could get a tracker rate of 4.49% with Virgin.
But an Nationwide borrower could benefit from a slightly cheaper deal: a two-year tracker at 4.39% (the base rate plus 0.14%) and a £999 fee.
One broker explained that the only way the borrower could get a cheaper deal would be to remortgage completely. This would mean going through new affordability checks, a valuation of their property as well as legal checks.
Around 1.5 million borrowers will be coming off fixed rate deals this year, many having fixed their mortgage when interest rates were much lower.
A Nationwide spokesperson told the Guardian : “Nationwide building society and Virgin Money continue to operate as separate lenders following the acquisition and are being integrated over time.
“Customers currently wishing to move provider must therefore do so as a remortgage.”
David Hollingworth at the broker firm L&C Mortgages said both Virgin and Nationwide had competitive deals and were much the same as the other.
