Halifax £5 reward account not offered at bos branches anymore

JuicyJesus

opinions4u wrote: »

Sounds like a good idea to me. But when, prompted by the EU, Lloyds were given the chance to dispose of 600 branches (about the number Halifax has) they couldn't wait to get rid of their own!

The branches Lloyds are selling seem to be ones where they either don't have much of a market presence or old Cheltenham and Gloucester branches. Round near me the C&G is going over to TSB, but all four of the Lloyds branches I know of are staying with Lloyds. Meanwhile, one town is losing its only Lloyds branch to TSB for no readily apparent reason, not to mention a Lloyds branch that was only fully refurbished in late 2009.

Halifax meanwhile has its own customer base which LBG apparently want to keep on. God knows why, they've got bad debt coming out their a*seholes. Maybe something to do with the government pressuring them to take on HBOS in the first place.

opinions4u

JuicyJesus wrote: »

The branches Lloyds are selling seem to be ones where they either don't have much of a market presence or old Cheltenham and Gloucester branches. Round near me the C&G is going over to TSB, but all four of the Lloyds branches I know of are staying with Lloyds. Meanwhile, one town is losing its only Lloyds branch to TSB for no readily apparent reason, not to mention a Lloyds branch that was only fully refurbished in late 2009.

Rough figures, but something like 160 C&G branches and 450 LTSB branches heading off to the Co-op. Including the whole of LTSB Scotland.

Halifax meanwhile has its own customer base which LBG apparently want to keep on. God knows why, they've got bad debt coming out their a*seholes. Maybe something to do with the government pressuring them to take on HBOS in the first place.

The Halifax retail book is probably cleaner than Lloyds TSB. The green brand has significantly more unsecured lending on its books. The brown stuff in HBOS was on the corporate side where unbelievably stupid lending to property firms sunk them. The retail mortgage book is far from clean (TMB, BoS and BM active in the lie to buy market) but they always had enough capital to cover that going wrong (until some idiot threw it away in Ireland and on UK property firms).

rb10

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Halifax meanwhile has its own customer base which LBG apparently want to keep on. God knows why, they've got bad debt coming out their a*seholes. Maybe something to do with the government pressuring them to take on HBOS in the first place.

Friends who worked for Lloyds credit cards have said that the quality of the HBOS credit card book is significantly better than the Lloyds book. They believe that the same is true across the board - Halifax's retail books are, in general, much better quality.

Hence why it is Lloyds customers being sold off - you'd be daft to get rid of the best bits of your portfolio.

And it's also the reason why all Lloyds credit cards are now managed by the former HBOS teams, in an effort to bring their quality up to scratch.

They have told me that the Halifax and BOS retail brands are very profitable, with, in general, a higher quality of customer than Lloyds.

JuicyJesus

Well, that's me set straight then.

opinions4u

JuicyJesus wrote: »

Well, that's me set straight then.

Not really. There's absolutely no doubt that bad debts at HBOS destroyed the firm and dragged Lloyds TSB down.

But the Halifax and BoS branch networks, call centres and Internet sites were attracting retail customers who, on the whole, paid their debts back.

The Halifax branches are usually in better locations with more floor space and stronger marketing. The call centres were more flexible and, along with the online service, able to do more for customers than the Lloyds TSB model (which makes you use branch or snail mail for far too many things).

Had LBG not been created the taxpayer would have been lumbered with BOS Corporate and BOS International (the bad debt - lots of it) and the profitable retail arm would have found a buyer (BBVA wanted it) and we'd have more genuine competition out on the high street (and a deeper recession).

Either way, when asked to lose branches the now departed management from LTSB made their choice. Get rid of our own stuff - the newly acquired Halifax and BoS ones need keeping.