{"id":43767,"date":"2026-05-21T09:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/43767\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:50:10","slug":"lloyds-to-lose-title-of-uks-biggest-branch-network-to-rival-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/43767\/","title":{"rendered":"Lloyds to lose title of UK\u2019s biggest branch network to rival bank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lloyds is set to lose the title of the UK’s largest bank branch network<\/a> next month as in-person banking is regaining popularity.<\/p>\n

Nationwide building society anticipates its chain of 696 branches will soon be the biggest in the country, as it also plans to hand out a new \u00a3100 bonus<\/a> to members in June.<\/p>\n

It follows Lloyds Banking Group<\/a>‘s initiation of a new tranche of closures across its brands later this month. After 95 sites, including Halifax and Bank of Scotland branches, are shut, the group will have 610 branches by March next year.<\/p>\n

Dame Debbie Crosbie, Nationwide\u2019s chief executive, said the building society was finding its branches “increasingly popular with customers”, adding the “tide is turning”.<\/p>\n

\"Lloyds Lloyds Bank is closing 95 sites across its brands later this month (Reuters) <\/p>\n

\u201cSo I suppose, in some regards, I\u2019m not surprised that there\u2019s a lot of our competitors thinking very carefully about strategy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see huge success in our branch network and continue to see it, so perhaps the tide is turning and we will certainly continue to invest in our branches.\u201d<\/p>\n

People<\/a> opening current accounts with Nationwide increased by 20 per cent through its branches in the past year, it said.<\/p>\n

The building society has pledged to keep its 605 Nationwide branches and 91 Virgin Money<\/a> sites open until at least 2030.<\/p>\n

\"Nationwide Nationwide expects to have the UK\u2019s biggest branch network this year (Alamy\/PA) <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have any immediate plans to open any new branches but we will always keep that under review,\u201d Dame Debbie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one thing we\u2019re doing is extending opening hours in a lot of our branches and we\u2019re seeing demand for Saturdays and for longer hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are finding is that more and more people really value face-to-face, human contact\u2026 particularly for areas like fraud, bereavement and power of attorney.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Nationwide Nationwide recently took over Virgin Money (PA) <\/p>\n

Meanwhile,\u00a0Nationwide announced its latest \u201cFairer Share\u201d payment, the fourth since the profit-sharing initiative began, with around 4.4 million members eligible for \u00a3100 in June.<\/p>\n

It said around\u00a0\u00a31.5 billion will have been returned to members since the scheme began in 2023, and it aims to make the payments every year depending on the group\u2019s financial performance.<\/p>\n

Nationwide is a mutual organisation, meaning it is owned by members rather than shareholders.<\/p>\n

The group\u2019s latest financial results revealed lower profits compared with the year before, following the takeover of Virgin Money.<\/p>\n

The building society made a pre-tax profit of \u00a31.49 billion for the year to the end of March, down from the \u00a32.3 billion it made last year.<\/p>\n

Nationwide said the previous year\u2019s earnings had been bolstered by a one-off gain from the acquisition of Virgin Money, which it is currently integrating into the group.<\/p>\n

The Virgin Money brand is set to be phased out and its customers will be able to transition to Nationwide, while the first rebranding of branches is expected to come in 2028.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lloyds is set to lose the title of the UK’s largest bank branch network next month as in-person…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21256],"tags":[22135,20919,22136,3692,2861,9714,22104],"class_list":["post-43767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lloyds-banking-group","tag-bank-branch-network","tag-branch-network","tag-debbie-crosbie","tag-lloyds","tag-lloyds-banking-group","tag-nationwide-building-society","tag-virgin-money"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116611948690735719","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}