Few names have loomed larger on Britain's high street than Halifax, and after 173 years it is being abandoned. Lloyds Banking Group, which has owned the lender since 2009, has confirmed it will spin off Halifax as an independent brand and move all customer accounts to Lloyds over time.
For account holders, the title is reassuring: you don't need to do anything. Lloyds says customers will be contacted directly about the changes through trusted channels, including the Halifax app, online banking, email and letter. Most importantly, sorting codes and account numbers will remain the same, and there is no change in the deposit protection savings they rely on.
This move was several weeks behind. Reports in May signaled that the club was considering abandoning Halifax altogether, and the decision is now official. The idea, as Lloyds says, is to simplify. Using four overlapping consumer brands – Lloyds, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and MBNA – is proving increasingly difficult to distinguish as the distinction between them has faded, and as customers are migrating en masse to a single application.
That last point is the real engine behind the shakedown. More than 21 million Lloyds Banking Group customers now use its mobile app as their main method of banking, a shift that has prompted the group to close a further 95 branches across its range. If many people rarely set foot in a branch, the business case for keeping different names in different areas of the store becomes very weak.
Halifax has been part of the national furniture since it was founded in West Yorkshire in 1853. It issued its first mortgage that year and grew to become one of the UK's largest building societies before demutualising and, eventually, being folded into Lloyds during the financial crisis. At its height in the early 2000s, a customer service consultant named Howard Brown became its most visible face, singing his way through a series of television commercials that cemented the brand firmly in the public's memory.
Jas Singh, Lloyds Banking Group's chief consumer relations officer, wanted to soften the blow. “As Halifax transitions to Lloyds, our Halifax customers will keep everything they know and love today – the same app design, the same face across our branches – even the same type code and account number,” he said. “But as Lloyds clients, they will get the best intelligence and experience we can offer.”
There is also the size of the region. Lloyds insists it remains committed to the city of Halifax and the Yorkshire and Humber region, where around 3,000 staff are based at its Trinity Road office. No job cuts have been announced as part of the change, and the Halifax branches will be rebranded as Lloyds or their customers relocate to a nearby Lloyds site in 2027.
For archives, the most important information resides in small books. As the group confirmed in May, and reiterated in its official announcement, account numbers will not change and there will be no change to protection under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which protects eligible deposits of up to £85,000 per person, per banking licence. Customers who hold money with both Halifax and Lloyds should, as ever, check how that licensing structure affects their personal cover.
Halifax's disappearance is part of a regrouping of British retail banks, which has already seen challengers such as Revolut gain a full UK banking license and traditional lenders shrink their branch locations. For customers, small changes tomorrow. But the slow fading of the 173-year-old name is a reminder of how quickly the general design of the highway is being redrawn.
