Nationwide reigns supreme in bank switch war as Santander falters

Thursday 29 January 2026 2:02 am
 |  Updated: 

Wednesday 28 January 2026 2:46 pm

Nationwide held onto its current account switching crown. (Image: PA)

Nationwide maintained its top spot in the tussle for current account switchers in the third quarter of 2025 as the mutual sweetened its offer for new joiners.

The building society – which was slapped with a £44m fine in December for failing to flag Covid fraud – secured a net gain of 41,450 switchers after it relaunched its £175 switching deal at the beginning of the three-month window.

Natwest came in third for highest gains after introducing an identical policy to Nationwide days apart in September. But the bank dramatically undershot the mutual’s wins at just 8,731, according to the latest release from the current account switching service.

A whopping £200 boost managed to get some customers enthusiastic about switching to Lloyds, with Britain’s biggest mortgage lender gaining 23,007. But this was offset by a staggering 26,597 in losses taking the bank to a net loss of 3,590.

Banking sector hit by outages

Santander’s £180 sweetener, which ended on 30 July, failed to shift the dial. The Spanish-headquartered bank was stung with over 42,000 ditching their current account leaving net losses at near-20,000.

The bank dealt with a major outage in March of 2025 that left users unable to make payments. Data from the Treasury Select Committee in the same month showed Santander had 116 hours worth of outages in the last two years, the third highest behind Natwest (194) and HSBC (176).

Fintech darling Monzo scooped up at net gain of near-10,000 switchers, the second highest of the pack in the three months ending September 2025. But even the digital bank hasn’t been without its tech wobbles with Monzo customers reporting a disruption earlier this month that left the app not “fully functional”.

Outages have hit the sector over the last year as lenders race to beef up their tech capacity. Lloyds was swept up in the cyber chaos with Amazon Web Services – which was triggered by a failure in automation systems.

The Treasury Committee report last year showed banks were down for a combined total of 31 days in the space of two years. Barclays wrote in a letter to the Treasury Committee last year that it expects to pay up to £7.5m in compensation to customers after a three-day outage.