Lloyds Banking Group is preparing to scrap the Halifax brand after 173 years on the high street, in what would amount to one of the most significant rebrands in British banking history.
The FTSE 100 lender, which also owns Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and pensions and investment business Scottish Widows, is reported to be drawing up plans to wind down Halifax as a standalone consumer-facing brand, with existing customers gradually migrated across to Lloyds Bank. According to The Sun, which first reported the story, new digital account applications through Halifax could be paused as early as July, with the brand expected to stop taking on new customers altogether by October.
A Lloyds Banking Group spokesperson said the company “regularly looks” at the role its brands play in supporting customers, but stressed there are “no changes for customers as of today” and that no final decision has been taken.
The end of a 173-year-old high-street name
If confirmed, the move would draw a line under a brand whose roots stretch back to 1853, when the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society was founded above a coffee house in the Yorkshire mill town that gave it its name. By 1913 it was the largest building society in the country, and its 1997 demutualisation, which turned 7.5 million members into shareholders, remains the biggest stock-market flotation of its kind in UK history.
Halifax merged with the Bank of Scotland in 2001 to form HBOS, before being absorbed into Lloyds Banking Group during the emergency rescue of the financial crisis in January 2009. It has since operated as a trading division of Bank of Scotland, sitting alongside Lloyds Bank within the same group while continuing to compete with it on the high street and online.
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