Another High Street Rebrand

[Inspector Sands]

Lloyds TSB is to rebrand to Lloyds Bank by 2013. This coincides with the disappearance of most Halifax stores from Scotland, which will soon be followed by a disappearance of all Lloyds TSB Scotland branches.
See more.
Can't say I was surprised.

It's not a surprise really as the article says the plan was always to sell the TSB name with the bits of the bank they're getting rid of.

RBS are doing the same but with the dormant 'William & Glyn Bank' brand

[WillPS]

Except it's just going to be more Santander branches. God know why they need them, what with the entire Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester branch network!

[Pete]

Do they have to sell off customers too? As a former TSB customer will I be demerged in to the new TSB? I won't be staying if they're rebranding as Bank of Scotland as I have a zero-tolerance policy with regards to HBOS after receiving the single worst example of customer service ever at their hands.

[Sput]

And that is....

[Pete]

And that is....

I'm not going in to it on here, but it was *very* bad. I'll tell you on MSN.

[Sput]

*SHOCKED* at the super-secret poorness of it.

[DVB Cornwall]

Do they have to sell off customers too? As a former TSB customer will I be demerged in to the new TSB? I won't be staying if they're rebranding as Bank of Scotland as I have a zero-tolerance policy with regards to HBOS after receiving the single worst example of customer service ever at their hands.

Based on the practice with RBS customers whose accounts are being transferred to Santander, once any deal with Lloyds is announced, on disposal, any affected Lloyds customer will be offered the right to stay with Lloyds rather than transfer. They'll be moved to a continuing Lloyds account whose characteristics are as similar to their existing pre-transfer Lloyds account.

RBS customers have already received this opportunity mailing and from information received, 'significant numbers' are doing so.

[WillPS]

Whilst we're sort of on the subject, is it just me that finds the process of being allocated to a branch redundant? Every single account I've had (a fair few!) has been opened online, and depending on the bank I've either been allocated to my nearest branch (Halifax and NatWest) or their headquarters/flagship branch (smile.co.uk/Co-operative Bank and Alliance & Leicester). I've never been in a situation where I need to visit "my branch" for anything (in fact, since NatWest allocated me to an automated branch there's a significant number of occasions I've had to visit another branch specifically), so why do I need it for most (but not all?!) Direct Debit applications. Very annoying.

[Inspector Sands]

Except it's just going to be more Santander branches. God know why they need them, what with the entire Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester branch network!

I thought the idea was sell off a bundle containing brands, branches and customers so to start 2 new high street banks

So TSB with the Scottish Lloyds branches and the English BOS branches would turn form a Virgin Bank and the equivalent bundle from RBS forming a Tesco bank for example

[WillPS]

Except it's just going to be more Santander branches. God know why they need them, what with the entire Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester branch network!

I thought the idea was sell off a bundle containing brands, branches and customers so to start 2 new high street banks

So TSB with the Scottish Lloyds branches and the English BOS branches would turn form a Virgin Bank and the equivalent bundle from RBS forming a Tesco bank for example

I guess that the redundant brand was packaged so that there was that option - but at least in the case of RBS that's not going to happen.

[DVB Cornwall]

Simple economics in the case of RBS - Santander's bid was significantly higher than any other for the W&G branches. I believe it was almost double than the next nearest.