National Wealth Management Holdings priced $350 million of three year, senior, bonds yesterday. The issue was launched on Monday with an indicative credit spread of 200 basis points. The National Australia Bank insurance and wealth management subsidiary is rated one notch lower than the bank, at 'AA-'.As it was, NWMH was able to achieve pricing five bps tighter on the two-tranche issue, raising $150 million fixed and $200 million floating at 195 bps over swap/bank bills. The timing of the issue is curious, as NWMH appears to have waited until the last possible minute to undertake the bond issue. The bonds will settle on March 26, which is the same day NWMH has $150 million of bonds issued three years ago maturing. These bonds were issued with a credit spread of just 22 bps - how times have changed. But then the major banks could issue three bonds with spreads in the high single digits.Perhaps there is a pricing formula that says the insurance and wealth management subsidiaries of a major bank must pay a credit spread that is something more than twice what the bank itself would pay - at least for three-year funds. Three-year bonds issued by one of the major banks would attract a credit spread of around 80 bps at the moment.There are few benchmarks against which to make a comparison. Colonial Finance is the only comparable entity to have issued in the domestic market.It privately placed September 2011 bonds in July last year. These carried a spread of 235 bps, while the majors were issuing three-year bonds with spreads around 115 bps. The formula appears to hold but conditions have improved a lot since then and even an 'A-'  rated electricity and gas utility was able to issue 7.5 year bonds with a spread of just 165 bps last week.