Gabriel Ward

A good example of why mutuals matter - and Nationwide Building Society getting it right. I often get the feedback when I raise concerns about the state of #Member governance at #Nationwide that I can always "vote with my feet" and take my business elsewhere. But to me this misses the point - everyone in the #UK is better off when you have a #mutual behaving like a mutual, i.e. putting customers first, and, for example, pricing better than the #competition. Walking across the street to a bank branch (if there's still one in your town) - or, more likely, downloading a different app - is weakening competition between the mutual-owned and shareholder-owned sectors. #Pricing products competitively and transparently is where building societies should excel. Their customers are their owners after all. Sometimes #BuildingSocieties (their raison d'être) are the most competitive mortgage providers - but not consistently so. Ditto savings rates. It’s the lack of consistency that many Members find frustrating and difficult to reconcile with a mutual ethos. Too much of retail banking is built, sadly, on customer ignorance and lethargy. Challenger brands, and potentially the rise of Open Banking - particularly as a layer for information gathering on pricing, etc. and recommendations to reduce switching costs - are likely to change that. Well done Kristo Käärmann, Cian Weeresinghe and the wider team at Wise for building this Transparency Rating and continuing to shine a spotlight on poor practices in #CrossBorder #payments.

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UK digital bank Monzo Bank has agreed to acquire mortgage broker Habito in order to allow its customers to secure a mortgage directly inside the Monzo app. Monzo points to 2024 research showing that 87% of UK homebuyers used a mortgage broker, showcasing how important brokers remain to the buying journey of British house hunters. By folding Habito into its app, Monzo aims to simplify what its chief banking officer Kunal Malani (pictured below) described as a complex and stressful process. The integration will build on Monzo’s existing Home Ownership feature, where more than 450,000 customers already track their property values and mortgage balances. The bank reported revenue growth of 48% year on year to £1.2 billion in 2025, supported by a user base of 14 million consumers and about 800,000 businesses. Growth Metric: 87% mortgage broker usage Nearly nine in ten UK homebuyers use a mortgage broker, giving Monzo a clear reason to bring Habito directly into its app. This story was initially published in this week’s issue of Fintech Growth Insider. To read the other crunchy fintech stories covered in it (or to join the 9,000+ fintech pros that already signed up), click the link in the comments.

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In the world of UK pensions, the "Consolidation Wave" is no longer a prediction, it's the current reality. But as schemes merge to gain scale and better outcomes, they are hitting a massive, invisible wall: Legacy Data. Decades of inconsistent records, missing National Insurance numbers, and "messy" manual entries are turning strategic mergers into operational nightmares. Our Head of Data & AI, James Poulten, explores why the traditional "manual cleanup" approach is failing and how AI-driven Entity Matching is the evolution the industry needs. https://lnkd.in/et4DfPSB

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I haven’t always agreed with the Payment Systems Regulator , but lately they been doing good things. This latest move to cap Intechange fees for UK merchants selling to EU card holders feels right. Being outside the EU is already hard enough on UK retailers, any wins they can get should be celebrated.

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