Nationwide advert lays trap for its own boss (The Times)

The lampoon of fat-cat bankers starring Dominic West looks rather close to home now Dame Debbie Crosbie is taking home £4.7m.

Monday June 08 2026, 9.40pm

By Ben Martin

Link: https://www.thetimes.com/business/companies-markets/article/nationwide-debbie-crosbie-pay-h09bz696p

In the latest TV ad from Nationwide poking fun at its shareholder-owned rivals, the self-important bank boss played by Dominic West grumbles “I deserve a bonus” when he’s told the building society is doling out £100 payments to millions of members. Just wait until he hears about the awards the mutual has handed to its chief executive.

Because running a customer-owned mutual, it turns out, is more lucrative than one might think. Britain’s biggest building society disclosed on Monday that Dame Debbie Crosbie, its boss since 2022, took home £4.7 million for the 12 months to the end of March, up sharply from £2.5 million the previous year.

Crosbie’s pay package has been swelled by the vesting of her first long-term, performance-linked award worth almost £1.5 million, as well as an annual bonus of more than £1.7 million, and it makes her the best-paid chief executive in Nationwide’s 142-year history.

Kevin Parry, the mutual’s chairman, said it reflects “the society’s outstanding performance and development over the last three years” and it’s true that Nationwide, and its member-customers, are doing well under Crosbie. The mutual is now the UK’s second-biggest mortgage lender thanks to her £2.9 billion deal two years ago to buy Virgin Money, the bank previously called CYBG, where she spent most of her career.

The benefits enjoyed by some of its 19 million members have also become more tangible under Crosbie, who started its annual “fairer share” payments of £100 each to its four million-plus customers that have a current account and either a savings account or a mortgage with the mutual. This year’s round of bonuses, totalling £440 million and paid this month, is the fourth consecutive cash distribution to members and comes on top of the more intangible value Nationwide delivers to its customers through competitive rates on mortgages and savings.

So members may well be pleased. But by focusing its West-starring marketing in recent years on lampooning fat-cat bankers, Nationwide risks looking hypocritical now that Crosbie has earned a near-£5 million pay package that wouldn’t look out of place at a listed lender. The maximum on offer to Crosbie was almost £7 million it all targets had been met. Charlie Nunn, the boss of Britain’s largest mortgage provider, Lloyds Banking Group, was paid £7.4 million for 2025 and in 2023 he earned £3.7 million.

It comes as Nationwide also finds itself embroiled in a row with James Sherwin-Smith, one of its customers, who hopes to become the first member-nominated candidate in decades to win election to the mutual’s board at next month’s AGM, but who last week accused Nationwide of seeking to “weaponise” its voting system against him. The spat potentially leaves the society open to criticism it is straying from the democratic principles of the mutual movement. That Nationwide is “unlike the banks” is at the heart of what it calls its “fundamental difference”, but, when it comes to executive pay, the line is becoming blurred.