Jayne-Anne Gadhia, managing director of Virgin One, said: "What a
fantastic compliment that IF has paid us. They are obviously rattled
by the success of Virgin One. Despite the massive amount of money
they have spent on attracting new customers with unsustainable loss
leading rates, we still have three times more direct customers and
our growth shows no sign of slowing."
The adverts focus on what IF claim is a shortcoming of the One account – in that all the customer’s money is held in a single account.
Gadhia, said: "Later this month we are improving the One
account. It will keep all the benefits of flexibility and single interest
rate that none of our competitors have, but will also allow customers
to view their money how they want, so if they want to see their
mortgage, savings and loans separately, they can. What a shame
for IF that their adverts will be out-of-date just a couple of weeks
after they were launched."
In response to the statement, Angela McIntosh, marketing director at Intelligent Finance, said: "I am a bit surprised by the ferocity of Virgin’s response to a simple advertising campaign that is headed by a real customer who has chosen to leave them to join Intelligent Finance. We are not singling them out. We have used real customers in our adverts for some time now."
"It is strange, is it not, that they choose now a full four years after their launch to produce what can only be called a poor imitation of our account? It seems late in the day, only now, to be seeking to provide its customers with a small degree of the real flexibility which is the cornerstone of our product. Not only that, after years of saying they would never use IFAs on the back of our success they have changed that strategy too, what is it they say about imitation being the sincerest form of flattery? "
"Our one year results prove without a shadow of a doubt that customers believe our product is superior. Information contained within the Virgin release shows that they have a mere £3.85 billion of committed customer facilities - that is after four years. In just one year alone we reported actual balances of £6.4 billion almost twice their four year figure. The same release points out that they have 70,000 customers at the end of our first year, we reported that we had 327,000 accounts - surely evidence that customers are warming to a fairer banking principle."
Virgin One have yet to issue a further statement.
