Oxera advises Nationwide Building Society

The Board of Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR) has today announced the results of the Capability and Innovation Fund Pool B grant process, with Nationwide Building Society (Nationwide) receiving the top prize of £50m. Investec and the Co-Operative Bank won smaller awards of £15m each.

Nationwide, the Co-Operative Bank and Investec have pledged to match the prize with their own investments.

The Capability and Innovation Fund Pool B grant is designed to promote competition in the market for banking services to SMEs in the United Kingdom through the modernisation of existing business current account offerings or the development of new business current accounts or ancillary product propositions.

The application window for the Pool B process was open from 1 February to 29 March 2019. BCR received a total of 13 applications from 10 applicants.

Oxera provided an independent analysis of the impact of Nationwide’s proposition on the business banking market that was used to support Nationwide’s successful application.

The team supporting Nationwide was led by Oxera Partner and Head of Financial Services Reinder Van Dijk, Senior Consultant Jonathan Haynes, and Consultants Sida Yin and Georgia Davies.