Proactive Investors - Nationwide Building Society (LON:NBS) has seen its advert featuring The Crown actor Domonic West banned in the UK over claims the lender was not closing branches.
According to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), Nationwide misled viewers over the claims, given branches had in fact been closing and it was unclear the vows not to cut further sites only lasted until 2026.
Despite closing fewer sites than rivals over the past ten years, the ASA pointed out that Nationwide had still cut 20%, or 152, of its branches.
Nationwide had claimed, “unlike the big banks we’re not closing our branches” in the advert though, which saw West, who plays Prince Charles in Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX)'s The Crown, mock customers and plan closures while posing as a fictional bank boss.
The same slogan had appeared on Nationwide’s radio and printed ads, prompting almost 300 complaints, including from rival Banco Santander (BME:SAN).
“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,” the ASA said.
“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 ad must not appear again in their current form.”
Changing consumer habits and a shift towards online banking has seen the number of physical branches in the UK decline rapidly, prompting concerns over service for vulnerable people.
For instance, there were over 21,000 branches in the UK during the mid 1980s, with this falling to less than half of that by the 2020s.