Customers will be given a £100 loyalty bonus nationwide

Dominic West's Nationwide advert banned for misleading customers about branch closures

Ms Crosby also launches exclusive guarantee for relevant eligible members paying 5.5% and aiming to encourage more customers to open current accounts with a £200 sign-on bonus.

She said consumer demand had remained strong despite the challenging economic environment.

Ms Crosby said: “We are very pleased with how reliable customers have been in our community. We see debt remaining low, with very little growth, but we see people continuing to spend.

“We saw things going better and more stable than expected.”

The group differs from other large lenders in that it has members who own shares rather than shareholders.

Last year, Nationwide announced a £2.9bn deal to buy major lender Virgin Money. Over the next few years, the company plans to integrate the group into its overall structure.

The deal was approved by Virgin Money shareholders on Wednesday, but members will not be asked to vote on the takeover. Nationwide said the building society's rules meant it did not need to seek their approval.

A petition calling for a vote was signed by about 5,000 Nationwide customers.

Ms Crosby said the majority of members were «very happy» with the deal.

She said the building society had written to its 16 million members twice to keep them informed about the Virgin takeover.

“We have seen really limited demand among our customer base to vote,” she said.

“Our customers and our members are much more interested in things like our brand promise and the value they get from our products and services. .

“There are no voting requirements under either the building society rules or internal governance rules and the vast majority of our members are very happy with this.”