Nationwide to complete building societies merger by 2015

The Cheshire, Derbyshire and Dunfermline building societies will be merged into Nationwide and disappear over the next two years.

Nationwide has announced further details of its plan to merge the Cheshire, Derbyshire and Dunfermline building societies into its main operations. This is set to lead to the loss of 500 jobs and the closure of up to half of the three building societies’ 91 branches.

Cheshire and Derbyshire were merged into Nationwide in 2008, as a result of the financial crisis, with Dunfermline taken over a year later.

Nationwide says the move will benefit customers of those building societies, as they have only had access to a limited range of products since they were brought into the Nationwide fold.

Despite this, Cheshire and Derbyshire have frequently topped the best buy tables for savings and loans products recently.

The Dunfermline is set to disappear from next spring, with Cheshire set to follow in the autumn and Derbyshire at the end of the year.

Around half of the societies’ branches will then become Nationwide branches, with the fate of the remainder being decided on a case-by-case basis, in part depending on how close a branch is to the nearest Nationwide.

For those branches that aren’t initially set to be rebranded, the message seems to be ‘Use them or lose them’.

The process will be completed by mid-2015. Nationwide says it will keep customers fully updated as to what’s happening when.

And hopefully some of those market-leading products will be retained under the Nationwide banner.

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