Monmouthshire happenings

[Essex123]

Greetings all.

A curious announcement on the Monmouthshire website about early closing on Wednesday to brief staff on some important information about the future of the society...

https://www.monbs.com/blog/early-closure-280421/

One to keep an eye on..

[planteria]

and interesting spot Essex..
a 'merger' with The Principality?
a sale to a non-mutual?
it has to be something significant, surely?

[Essex123]

It certainly sounds interesting. Some observations:

1) their financial year end is this Friday - 30th April
2) last year they reported a loss, and on an underlying basis a very small profit of £0.2m on assets of £1.25bn.
3) their gross capital ratio last year was 5.28%. I’m not sure I recall seeing any societies recently with a lower %.
4) they recently purged my decent interest rate regular saver into a bog standard instant access account. I think various regular savers were affected - maybe an effort to bolster their net interest margins?

If they go, my punt would be on Coventry I think.

Let’s see what happens tomorrow. Maybe they’re just announcing the sponsorship of the local country show or something!

PS. Have all the discussions at Rpoints been lost?

[Essex123]

Someone asked earlier on Twitter about a Principality merger and they have literally just replied throwing cold water over any M&A.

So country show sponsorship it is!

[planteria]

interesting Essex... if there's no significant news then the senior management team are wrong to have closed the branches and telephony services.

my Principality thought was that they'd be keen to maintain accounts in welsh Wales. it's a shame they've ruled out "any M&A", a three-way Welsh merger would have been good to see.

PS. Have all the discussions at Rpoints been lost?

seemingly so, unfortunately.

[Essex123]

That’s a shame re: Rpoints. My last contribution/debate there was around how some proposed rule changes at LV actually looked like really positive news in terms of what they could go on to facilitate!

Back to Monmouthshire, I can’t see any updates on their website or in the media. Maybe we get some kind of update when they reopen tomorrow!

[planteria]

and you were right re LV..

re MonBS: no news yet. their latest "News" is their closure yesterday to inform staff of their plans. hard to believe really.

[planteria]

still no news as to what the closure was in aid of?

i just called Customer Services and got through to a message saying they'll call back within 48hours. impossibly poor service.

[Essex123]

Well what a damp squib that was! I’m sure there were some members caught out by the closure, and for what?!!

[planteria]

any indication at all as to why they chose to pause all member contact?