Dominic West’s Nationwide advert banned over ‘misleading’ claim

Ads for Nationwide featuring the actor Dominic West have been banned for misleading customers after the building society suggested it would not be closing its branches.

The Advertising Standards Authority launched an investigation after receiving hundreds of complaints about the TV, radio and newspaper ads where West plays the boss of a fictional bank.

Among 282 complaints was one from rival Santander, which understood that Nationwide had recently closed or reduced opening hours at several branches, and challenged whether the ads were misleading.

In the television ad, West, who recently played Prince Charles in The Crown, works for a lender called A.N.Y. Bank and jokes about a large expenses bill for lunch and breaking “the company record”.

He then jokes about cutbacks and says that the branch downstairs is “a bit overindulgent nowadays” and when a colleague says that Nationwide, seen from their window over the road, is not closing branches, West replies: “We’re not Nationwide, are we? We are nothing like them”.

‘Going, Going, Nowhere’

A voiceover at the end of the ad says: “Unlike the big banks, we’re not closing our branches,” while the on-screen text refers to branch closures at “Lloyds, Bank of Scotland/Halifax, Natwest, Barclays, Santander and HSBC.”

The radio ad featured a similar conversation, with the colleague saying: “Boss, news from Nationwide” and “They’ve just confirmed they’re keeping branches open,” followed by the same voiceover as the TV ad.

The newspaper ad featured the text “Going, Going, Nowhere” and “Unlike the big banks, we’re not closing our branches” but the small print at the bottom of the ad said: “If we have a branch in your town or city, we’ll still be there until at least 2026.”

Nationwide said it launched its original ‘Branch Promise’ in 2019 not to leave a town or city where there was no other Nationwide branch, and strengthened this in 2023 to guarantee they would not close any of their branches until at least 2026.

The bank told the ASA they had closed 20 branches in the last 18 months, including two in 2023, but it had the largest remaining number of branches of 10 banks.

The building society, which has around 600 branches, also supplied the regulator with an article from the consumer magazine Which? that recommended Nationwide as a bank for consumers who still valued face-to-face contact.

The ASA said viewers were likely to miss qualifications within the ads that the bank’s “Branch Promise” would be in place until “at least 2026”.

It also understood that in the 12 months before the ad campaign, Santander had closed fewer branches than Nationwide and, at the time the ad was seen, Santander had not announced that they would be closing branches in the future.

The ASA said: “We acknowledged that over a 10-year period, in comparison to other financial institutions, Nationwide had closed the smallest percentage of any financial institution’s estate.

“However, we noted that they had nevertheless closed 20% of their estate, which equated to 152 branches, and we considered that was a significant number that had been permanently closed.

“We also understood that since Nationwide had launched their original Branch Promise, in the 18 months since July 2022 they had permanently closed 20 branches. Of those 20, 14 had been closed in the 12 months preceding the campaign, with two of them having been closed in 2023.”

The ASA concluded: “As above, we understood that Nationwide’s Branch Promise was only valid until 2026, at which time Nationwide could begin to close branches permanently.

Branch promise

“We considered those factors relating to previous, recent branch closures and the effect on future branches in the long term were likely to be significant to consumers when making decisions about whether to choose Nationwide, in the context of the claims made in the ads that Nationwide were not closing their branches.

“Because we considered that consumers would understand from the ads that Nationwide would not be closing branches in the long-term future and that they had not recently closed branches, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”

The watchdog ruled that the ads must not appear again in their current form. “We told Nationwide Building Society not to mislead in relation to the closure of their branches,” it said.

A Nationwide spokesman said it accepted the decision and welcomed the opportunity to make clear its commitment to its Branch Promise.

“We recognise the ASA’s decision and are delighted to have the opportunity to make even clearer our now extended branch promise to keep every branch open until the start of 2028.

“The investment we have made to keep branches open means we now have more than any other brand and are the last one standing in more than 90 communities.”