Nationwide wins most responsible credit card lending award

Nationwide Building Society has been judged the most responsible credit card lender for the second year in a row at The Card Awards.

The Society picked up the award for ‘Most Responsible Credit Card Lending Practices' at the event at London's Battersea Evolution on 5th February 2009. Nationwide was once again recognised for the transparency and clarity of its credit card information and for its ‘Trust Us, Trust You' campaign.

Nationwide launched ‘Trust Us, Trust You' last year to underline its approach to responsible lending. The key message is one of the Society and its customers working together so that both Nationwide and its cardholders benefit: cardholders can Trust Us to lend responsibly; we can Trust You (our customer) to borrow within your means and keep your costs down.

The Card Awards praised Nationwide's approach to credit card lending and the various activities it has undertaken, including:

Top Tips on the Society's website providing easy to understand advice about how card holders can borrow responsibly;

The Society's approach to educating the next generation through sponsoring a paperback ‘The Teenager's Guide to Money' and launching nationwideeducation.com, an interactive website for use by children at home with their parents and in schools;

Nationwide's new simplified credit card marketing literature;

The way the Society deals with customers experiencing financial difficulties.

In addition to the current campaign, Nationwide's credit cards continue to offer benefits not available from most other providers including a ‘positive order of payments', which saves customers money by repaying any debt with a higher interest rate before repaying debt with a lower interest rate.

Jeremy Wood, divisional director at Nationwide, said: "To win this award for the second year running is a fantastic achievement for the Society and reflects our ongoing approach to responsible lending, whilst offering products which are fair and transparent. It has never been more important for card providers to demonstrate responsible lending practices and we believe our ‘Trust Us, Trust You' initiative clearly sets out our commitment."