UK account holders are constantly being incentivised to switch which bank they are with for a cash bonus. Recent figures showed Nationwide gave more than 40,000 members £175 for joining it in just two months.
Current account switches have exceeded one million for the third year running, after a spike in customers looking for better deals as 2025 came to a close. Nationwide garnered 41,450 new account holders between July and September, as savers were attracted by the £175 reward and annual payments through its profit-sharing scheme.
The final quarter of 2025 saw 350,114 current account switches, according to the Current Account Switch Service (CASS). However, some transferred their funds outside of CASS, meaning the true figure is most likely higher. There were 1.54million switches throughout the whole year.
But this represented a fall compared to the totals seen in 2023 and 2024. This was a period when higher interest rates were pushing up savings rates.
Full list of offers to switch offered by UK banks
Nationwide is not the only bank that has been offering Brits cash to switch.
It comes as Nationwide has said it will allow mortgage deeds to be signed electronically, without the need for a witness, as part of moves to help speed up and remove some of the inconvenience from the home-buying process.
The change means that people who are purchasing a property or looking to remortgage with Nationwide can sign their mortgage deed electronically, if their solicitor or conveyancer is set up to use qualified electronic signature (QES) technology.
Nationwide’s initiative applies only to homes in England and Wales.
A mortgage deed is a legal document tying a person’s mortgage to their property and has traditionally required a physical signature on paper.
But Nationwide will now allow QES – a secure type of electronic signature that has been identity-verified – to be used, following the Land Registry’s decision last year to start accepting this as part of the mortgage application process.
