JEFF PRESTRIDGE: Nationwide's chief executive is good but greedy - so have your say on his £2.6m pay

By JEFF PRESTRIDGE FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

Updated: 05:46 EST, 30 June 2014

Nationwide Building Society is one of the financial services industry’s few ‘good guys’.

Some would argue it’s actually a knight in shining armour when compared with the pariah that is Wonga – forced last week to pay out £2.6 million compensation for sending out bogus lawyers’ letters to 45,000 customers demanding they pay their debts. Or for that matter when the society is put up against any of the big banks or grasping energy suppliers where satisfactory customer service remains in woefully short supply.

Goody two shoes Nationwide rewards loyal customers with special deals, offers a decent range of current accounts,  handles complaints sensitively and prides itself on quality service.

Nice work if you can get it: In the last financial year, Nationwide boss Graham Beale received £2,571,000

Yet all this doesn’t mean the remuneration of its executives should escape scrutiny. Recent mailings to customers ahead of the society’s annual general meeting in Bournemouth next month reveal that in the last financial year Nationwide’s four executive directors shared pay totalling £6,559,000 – a  10.9 per cent increase on the year before.

Nice work if you can get it, I suppose. Even Matthew Wyles, a former director who left in December 2012 to join financial services company Castle Trust, received £407,000 for his troubles.

Leading the way in the Nationwide pay league was chief executive Graham Beale, who received £2,571,000 – 11.4 per cent up on the year before – and has now built a pension that will deliver an annual income in his dotage of no less than £282,000. Again, not bad if you can get it.

Customers may believe Beale deserves every penny. They may also argue that he provides better value pound for pound than Barclays boss Antony Jenkins, who received £1,602,000 last year and is now – mystifyingly – busy building a ‘go-to bank’ by axeing branches as if they were going out of fashion.

If so, those Nationwide customers can approve the directors remuneration report by completing the voting form they received with the society’s financial results (fill in the standard vote, don’t do the quick vote, which will just mean you approving every resolution put forward by the board).

Every vote will trigger a 20p donation to housing charity Shelter. Of course, those – like me – who believe Beale’s pay is yet another example of boardroom greed – are free to vote against. And Shelter still gets its 20p.

While on the subject of Nationwide, it has been a big beneficiary of the service introduced late last year to make switching banks easier (the society’s annual results confirm it opened 430,000 current accounts in the year to April).

You can now switch current accounts within seven working days without direct debits going astray and your salary not being paid into the new account in time for the monthly mortgage payment.

Despite widespread dissatisfaction with the big banks, current account switching still remains a minority financial pastime, with fewer than four per cent of customers a year moving.

So it is good to hear the Government announce last week the launch of a new comparison service next year to help you see if your account is the most appropriate – or whether an alternative would be more suitable. This will be done by analysing a year of banking transactions.

Andrea Leadsom, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and a Conservative MP with a CV dominated by working in the City, also indicated she was keen on the idea of immediate switching – suggesting such a proposal could figure in the next Conservative manifesto. This would be possible if bank customers were able to switch without changing either their sort code or account number.

Of course, the big banks say the IT changes required to enable instant switching are prohibitively expensive. But at £10 billion it’s less than half the sum the banks have already paid for compensating victims of payment protection insurance mis-selling.

The sooner we move to instant current account switching, the better. It is the Holy Grail.

Take advantage of a NISA

Tuesday heralds the launch of the all-singing, all-dancing New Individual Savings Account complete with a £15,000 annual contribution limit and more flexibility about what you can hold within its tax-friendly wrapper.

Nisa is a big improvement on the Isa and far more flexible than a pension (although not providing its attractive tax relief). For those with spare money to invest, it should be the first port of call.