Nationwide Building Society · DRN-6104180

The complaint Mr L complains that Nationwide Building Society (“Nationwide”) has reported a missed payment on his credit file when he exceeded his overdraft limit. What happened I won’t repeat all the facts here, as those aren’t in dispute. I have reviewed the entire file and if I don’t comment on something, it isn’t because I haven’t seen it - it’s that I haven’t deemed it relevant. I mean no discourtesy by this, it’s merely to reflect the informal nature of our service. Mr L says he’s unhappy Nationwide has applied a “missed payment” to his credit file. Mr L says a missed payment marker is generally understood to apply to missed contractual payments, not temporary breaches of an overdraft limit. Applying the marker feels disproportionate compared to the nature of the issue and he doesn’t feel he’s been treated fairly. In any event, he says it was Nationwide’s account fee that meant he exceeded his overdraft limit. He says he only received a single text message to say he’d exceeded his limit on 15 May, and no other emails or letters to inform him that Nationwide would be recording this on his credit file. Mr L says the terms and conditions on Nationwide’s website merely hint it “can be bad for your credit score”. So, Mr L doesn’t feel Nationwide has been sufficiently transparent or fair in how it has communicated the consequences to him. Mr L says surely this lack of clarity falls short of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (“FCA’s”) Principle 7, requiring firms to communicate clearly with its customers. Mr L would like the missed payment marker removed. Since referring his complaint to this service, Mr L reiterated that he found it difficult to find any information on Nationwide’s website that sets out his credit file will be impacted if he exceeds his overdraft limit. Also, a charge had taken Mr L over his limit and so he called Nationwide on 4 November 2025. But agents weren’t able to provide him with information about how long he’d need to be over his limit for his credit file to be affected, with one agent saying that his credit file wouldn’t be impacted, and he’d only be charged interest if he exceeded his overdraft limit. So, Mr L said it seems Nationwide’s staff aren’t clear on the matter either. Nationwide says the Pre-Contract Credit Information (“PCI”) provided at the time of lending, explains the impact of unarranged borrowing, its “understanding overdrafts” document sets out that Nationwide doesn’t offer unarranged overdrafts and there’s further information on its website. It says it’d normally prevent any attempts to exceed overdraft limits, but if unarranged borrowing does occur, there won’t be any charges, but it can affect a customer’s credit score. It says it would only send one alert when a customer exceeds their overdraft, and in this instance, it sent one to Mr L on 14 September 2025. Nationwide said the account fee remains applicable, regardless of overdraft status. Our Investigator didn’t uphold the complaint, but Mr L didn’t agree.

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So, the matter has been passed to me to decide. What I’ve decided – and why I’ve considered all the available evidence and arguments to decide what’s fair and reasonable in the circumstances of this complaint. Having done so, whilst I know this will disappoint Mr L, I’m not upholding this complaint, broadly for the same reasons as our Investigator. I’m satisfied the way in which Nationwide is reporting the account to the Credit Reference Agencies (“CRAs”) is correct. I’ll explain why. The account was in an unarranged overdraft between 14 May 2025 and 9 June 2025. The way in which Nationwide report an unarranged overdraft is as missed/late payments. All lenders are obliged to report accurate information to the CRAs. I appreciate that Mr L has said he hasn’t missed a payment. But the reporting of the missed payment is to reflect the fact that the account was in an unarranged overdraft at that time. In other words, when the account has been managed outside the terms of the agreement (by exceeding the overdraft limit in this instance), then this may be reported to the CRAs. Mr L has said that it was Nationwide’s account fee that took his account into an unarranged overdraft. But regardless, there is a responsibility on Mr L to ensure that there are enough funds in the account for payments to be made when they are due and to monitor the account on a regular basis. This wasn’t the case here which ultimately resulted in Mr L’s account entering into an unarranged overdraft. I can’t hold Nationwide responsible for this. Mr L feels that Nationwide’s actions are disproportionate. But there isn’t any dispute that he exceeded the agreed overdraft limit on his account. So, what’s relevant here, is that it’s Mr L’s responsibility to stay within the limit on his account and if that doesn’t happen, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for Nationwide to report that he hasn’t done that, at any point. I note that this isn’t an isolated incident in that Mr L has entered into an unarranged overdraft on other occasions too. So, based on what I’ve seen, I’m not persuaded that Nationwide has made an error when reporting a missed payment. I appreciate Mr L has also raised that he doesn’t think Nationwide has been transparent about how it will record this information with the CRAs. Nationwide has said it would have told Mr L it may report how he manages his account to the CRAs in the account opening literature. Given Mr L opened his account in 2014, this information no longer exists – due to the time that’s passed, that’s not unreasonable. But even if the information included was relatively general, similar to how Nationwide has set out on its website that “Unarranged overdrafts can be bad for your credit score”, I think this is sufficient to put customers on notice. I don’t think that it needs to set out every scenario where it may report to the CRAs. Instead, I’m satisfied that it’s enough for it to say that information may be reported to the CRAs. I can see Nationwide texted Mr L about entering into an unarranged overdraft. Mr L feels he should have received more communication about this, as well as notice that Nationwide was going to report a missed payment to the CRAs. However, there aren’t any rules or guidelines that say Nationwide is obliged to notify customers ahead of reporting a missed payment. So, I don’t find that it did anything wrong here and I’m satisfied it was enough for it to text Mr L,

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letting him know about the status of his account. In any event, as I’ve set out above, it’s Mr L’s responsibility to monitor his account and ensure he keeps within his overdraft limit. Subsequently, I don’t find that Nationwide breached any of the FCA’s principles here either, as claimed by Mr L in his complaint. I note that when bringing his complaint to this service, Mr L makes some points about Nationwide not responding to his complaint initially and that he had to make it a second time before getting a response. And that despite requesting a response in writing, Nationwide still tried to call him to discuss the complaint. As these points relate to how Nationwide handled Mr L’s complaint, it isn’t something I intend to comment on. That’s because our service isn’t able to consider complaints about complaint handling. In addition, as our Investigator has explained, if Mr L would like to complain specifically about what happened during the call in November 2025, this will form the subject of a new complaint and therefore I make no comment on this either, except to say I bore his comments in mind throughout this complaint. For all the reasons I’ve explained, I’m not upholding this complaint. My final decision My final decision is that I do not uphold this complaint. Under the rules of the Financial Ombudsman Service, I’m required to ask Mr L to accept or reject my decision before 27 April 2026. Sophie Kyprianou Ombudsman

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