Nationwide “A good way to bank” advert: Dominic West, the fairer-share pitch, and whether it is working

The Nationwide advert that launched “A good way to bank” in October 2023 does something no bank ad had tried in years: it spends 60 seconds being rude about banks. Dominic West plays the boss of A.N.Y. Bank, a man who expenses a lavish lunch, refuses to sign a leaving card and eyes up the local branch as extra office space. Two agencies, seven instalments and one ASA ruling later, it is the most effective piece of financial advertising in Britain, and this is how it got there.

Credits

• Client: Nationwide Building Society (Richard Warren, director of brand, marketing and corporate affairs)
• Agency: New Commercial Arts (2023 to 2024); Mother (from February 2025)
• Creative leads: Ian Heartfield (CCO, NCA); Dan Seager and Steve Hall (creative directors, NCA); Dickie Connell (Mother)
• Director: Bryan Buckley
• Production company: Hungry Man
• Media agency: Wavemaker UK
• Cast: Dominic West as the A.N.Y. Bank boss; Sunil Patel as his assistant
• Launched: October 2023

The brief: a mutual that nobody could tell from a bank

Nationwide is owned by its members, not shareholders. For decades that fact sat in the small print while the brand looked, sounded and behaved like every other high street lender. The rebrand of October 2023, reported by Marketing Beat as the biggest in 30 years, was designed to make the mutual difference visible and, crucially, to attach it to things a customer could actually feel.

Two proof points were ready to go. The Branch Promise, first made in 2019, committed to keeping every branch open. The Fairer Share payment, launched in 2023, handed £100 to members who held a current account plus savings or a mortgage. Richard Warren called the campaign “a new chapter for Nationwide as a modern and confident challenger to the big banks.” The strategy was simply to say so, loudly, at the banks’ expense.

The idea: make the enemy the star

New Commercial Arts, which had won the account in March 2023, inverted the usual challenger-brand formula. Instead of showing Nationwide being lovely, it showed a rival being awful. West’s boss of A.N.Y. Bank (the name does the job) is not a villain so much as an oblivious one: a man who cannot see why customers would mind losing a branch when there is a chatbot.

The comparison structure is the whole trick. Every scene at A.N.Y. Bank sets up a Nationwide answer: they close branches, we do not; they keep profits, we share them. It lets Nationwide claim its virtues without ever having to act virtuous on screen, which is the tone that kills most financial advertising.

The launch spot closed on the line “Unlike the big banks, we’re not closing our branches,” which would soon become a problem.

The craft

Bryan Buckley, shooting through Hungry Man, directs it like an American office comedy: wide, still frames, no music cues to signal the jokes, and long enough pauses for West to fill. West is the casting coup. He plays the boss with the same bruised charm he brought to Jimmy McNulty in The Wire, so the character is enjoyable company even while he is being appalling. Comedian Sunil Patel, as the assistant who quietly points out what Nationwide does, gives the ads their conscience and most of their best reaction shots.

The writing is disciplined. Each film has one product truth and one running gag, and the two are welded together in the final ten seconds. The 2024 daughter instalment (Grace Hogg-Robinson as the boss’s child who banks with Nationwide) added a second foil and opened up the younger audience Warren said was drawn to member ownership. The character now has a name, Hugo Platt, and a daughter with a name, Zozo, which tells you the brand knows it has a sitcom on its hands.

The media mix

Wavemaker UK planned and bought a launch heavy on broadcast reach: 60-second TV, cinema, VOD and YouTube, backed by press, radio, digital display and out-of-home including taxi and bus wraps. The plan also bought host reads on The Rest is Politics and The Rest is Money, a neat way to put the mutual argument in front of the people who might repeat it. Later flights bought marquee slots: Six Nations, The Masked Singer and Trigger Point for the SavingsWatch spot in February 2024, Love Island and The Open for the Fairer Share spot in July 2024, and Bake Off for the daughter film that September.

The ASA ruling

On 3 April 2024 the ASA upheld complaints from 282 people, Santander among them, about the TV, radio and press ads that ran in October and November 2023. The regulator found consumers would take “we’re not closing our branches” to mean Nationwide would not close branches in the long term and had not recently closed any. In fact it had shut 20 per cent of its estate, 152 branches, over ten years, and 14 in the 12 months before the campaign. The on-screen qualifier that the promise ran to 2026 was, the ASA said, likely to be missed.

Nationwide’s response was the smartest move of the whole campaign. Within nine days it was back on air with a re-cut spot that dropped the offending line and extended the Branch Promise to at least the start of 2028. NCA founder James Murphy called it “an even stronger version of a campaign the public loves.” It has since been extended again: on 12 November 2025 Nationwide committed to keep all 696 Nationwide and Virgin Money branches open until at least 2030. A ban became a firmer promise, which is the opposite of what usually happens.

From NCA to Mother

WPP bought New Commercial Arts in September 2024. Nationwide, which had hired an independent, ended the relationship and in February 2025 appointed Mother after a pitch against Neverland and Uncommon. The notable decision was what Mother did not do: it kept the platform, the character, the director and the production company. Its first film, “Scam Checker”, landed on 2 September 2025, with Hugo suspecting a FaceTime from his stranded daughter is an AI deepfake and Nationwide’s 24/7 Scam Checker as the payoff.

Two more followed. In October 2025 Hugo threw a premature victory party, complete with blimp, before learning Nationwide had won Which? Banking Brand of the Year. On 21 May 2026 the seventh instalment put him on the Tube for the first time, surrounded by commuters celebrating Fairer Share Day.

Mother’s Dickie Connell summed up the mechanism: “Hugo’s discomfort is the joke, but the Fairer Share Payment is the punchline.”

Fairer Share: the numbers behind the punchline

The payment is the campaign’s hard currency, and it has grown every year. The 2026 Fairer Share, announced on 21 May 2026, pays £100 to around 4.4 million members, roughly £440 million, between 10 and 30 June 2026. Members needed a qualifying current account plus qualifying savings or a mortgage on 31 March 2026.

The 2025 payment was £400 million, and Nationwide says the total paid since 2023 now exceeds £1.5 billion. Virgin Money customers become eligible from 2027, which gives the campaign a ready-made next chapter.

The results

The early signal was creative testing. Marketing Week reported a System1 star rating of 2.9 for the launch film against a consumer banking category average of 2.0, placing it in the top 10 per cent of banking ads tested. Nationwide has since said the platform took the brand from fourth to first for spontaneous advertising awareness, and Warren credited the Scam Checker flight with record switching performance.

The harder numbers sit in Nationwide’s preliminary results for the year to 31 March 2026. Its brand lead over the next best peer, measured by Ipsos’s Financial Research Survey, stood at 8.0 percentage points in March 2026, up from 7.5 in March 2025 and 5.5 in March 2024. More than one million current accounts were opened in the year and the society was first for current account switching for a fifth consecutive quarter. Underlying profit rose 9 per cent to £2,026 million, which pays for the £100s.

The industry has noticed. Nationwide, with Mother and Wavemaker London, is on the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2026 shortlist with a paper titled “Marketing and Finance: Pioneering a new kind of alliance”, with winners announced on 1 October 2026. It is also shortlisted for Marketing Week’s Brand of the Year 2026, decided in November. Mother was Marketing Week’s Agency of the Year for 2025, and this account is a large part of why.

Where it goes next

Seven films in, the format still has room. Each instalment has been tied to a product truth (branches, SavingsWatch, Fairer Share, scams, the Which? award) rather than a mood, and that is what keeps a comedy character from becoming a mascot.

The risk is familiarity: Hugo’s outrage has a fixed range, and the audience now knows the punchline is coming from the moment Sunil raises an eyebrow. The Virgin Money integration and the 2027 extension of Fairer Share to its customers give Mother the next hard fact to build on. The Branch Promise to 2030 gives it four more years of a claim no rival can copy.

What to steal

• Dramatise the competitor, not yourself. A funny enemy lets you claim virtues without acting pious.
• Anchor every instalment to a product truth with a number attached. Fairer Share works on screen because £100 is a fact, not a feeling.
• When the regulator bites, strengthen the promise rather than soften the ad. Nationwide turned a ban into a 2028 and then a 2030 commitment.
• Change agency without changing the idea. Mother kept the character, director and production company and lost no momentum.
• Cast a foil as carefully as the star. Sunil Patel’s assistant is the audience’s proxy and makes the brand the hero without a word of copy.
• Report brand lead in the annual results. Marketing that sits inside the finance narrative survives budget rounds.

The verdict

“A good way to bank” is the rare financial campaign where the joke, the strategy and the balance sheet all point the same way. The idea is sharp enough to survive an ASA ruling and an agency change, the craft is consistently good rather than dazzling, and the effectiveness evidence, from an 8-point brand lead to first place for switching, is as clean as this category produces.

It loses marks for a slightly narrow comic register and for a launch claim it should have qualified properly. Idea 8, Craft 7, Bravery 7, Effectiveness 9, Legs 8. Ad Royalty, and still on the throne in September 2026.