Lloyds Bank could announce the end of the Halifax brand 173 years after it was first launched, reports suggest. Halifax will reportedly stop taking on new customers, with existing ones will slowly moved to Lloyds. The transition is set to start on July 1, according to The Sun. There is no suggestion at this stage that Halifax’s 341 branches across the country will shut.
Bosses at the banking firm, which also owns Lloyds and Bank of Scotland, could prevent customers from opening new Halifax accounts via the brand’s app or website in July, before phasing it out entirely by October.
It comes after Lloyds announced the closure of 95 branches across the UK in February, including 31 Halifax sites. The BTU union, which represents 17,000 of the company’s staff, described the move as the “final nail in the coffin of branch banking”.
Plans to axe the Halifax brand are reportedly linked to it sharing the same market as Lloyds in England, while Bank of Scotland is the firm’s only presence in the country.
While no final decision is understood to have been taken, there would be no changes to customers’ account numbers or FSCS protection in the event of the change being enacted.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson said: “We regularly look at the role our brands play in supporting our customers.
“Our banking customers can already use any Lloyds, Halifax or Bank of Scotland branch, and see any of their products or services in any of their apps – there are no changes for our customers today.”
The Halifax Permanent Benefit Building Society was founded by a group of men in the eponymous West Yorkshire town in 1852, and grew to become the world’s largest building society, with assets of £47million, by 1928.
It was converted to a public limited company in 1997 and merged with the Bank of Scotland in 2001, before being acquired by Lloyds in 2009.