Indeed, although as @Oberoth had correctly said earlier, the Halifax standalone license had been dropped prior to the Lloyds takeover, as it was already operating under the Bank of Scotland license at that time.
Now it’s the Bank of Scotland license, including Halifax, Intelligent Finance, Birmingham Midshires and some savings accounts with AA and Saga Savings, plus the separate Lloyds license which is Lloyds Bank and Lloyds Private Banking.
More recently the group have also created a new company to manage their wealth management joint venture with Schroeder’s. That company is Schroeders Personal Wealth, and has no banking license of it’s own but is an FCA regulated company because it provides investment services.
Lloyds and TSB merged in 1995 (to form Lloyds TSB Group) and became a single bank for licencing purposes in 1999
Halifax and BOS merged in 2001 (to form HBOS) and became a single bank for licensing purposes in 2006
The two were then somewhat forcibly merged together in 2009 to form Lloyds Banking Group, but for whatever reason have never merged their license to one.
TSB then received its own license again in 2013, and after an initial period operating under LBG was divested via a floatation on the stock market. (Cheltenham & Gloucester was essentially closed up and split between LBG and the new TSB in the process.)
From then until today you have Halifax/Bank of Scotland (+Birmingham Midshires) under one license [the Bank of Scotland license] and Lloyds Bank (+Scottish Widows) on another [the Lloyds Bank license], both under LBG.
Yes, and TSB used a dormant company which was originally the “Lloyds TSB Scotland” holding company, which for some reason still existed, so bringing that company back into use and rebranding it as simply TSB may have helped in the new license process as Lloyds were able to quickly demonstrate that they’d capitalised the new entity. C&G also mainly became TSB, but I think some mortgages did move to Lloyds Bank.
I forgot about Scottish Widows Bank, but you are right that it’s part of the Lloyds license.
They’ve kept Bank of Scotland as a separate registered company because of its history and reputation in Scotland. To dissolve the company and make BoS merely a trading name of Lloyds Bank would infuriate the Scottish Nationalists. They would also lose the right to print their own bank notes in Scotland.
That’s the same reason that Virgin Money is just a trading name and Clydesdale Bank plc is still the legal entity. They have to keep it that way to continue to print bank notes.
Although there are various legal devices which could be employed to still allow banknote printing to continue, as NatWest did to continue with Ulster Bank notes even though Ulster Bank is itself now a brand of NatWest and part of the NatWest license.
It would be possible to transfer the right to print notes to Lloyds Bank, transfer the Bank of Scotland brand to the Lloyds license, and close the Bank of Scotland company. You would lose the Scottish registration but that would be the only material change, branding on notes could still be Bank of Scotland and older notes would still remain valid.
That answers the question of why the Bank of Scotland license was retained, which is different from the question of why didn’t they combine under a single license.
Lloyds will see itself as the senior partner in the hasty marriage and probably won’t want to give up its licence in case it later divested itself of BOS… BOS is older than the Bank of England so as mentioned earlier, politically in Scotland it isn’t tenable to mess with BOS
Don’t buy the ‘might later divest’ rationale, sorry.
TSB shows that license separation down the line is viable - you move all your active retail brands to one, keep the historic Lloyds license attached to another asset and then you move back if needed.
It might make sense if there was an actual plan to divest BoS mid-term, but they’ve made very clear there isn’t - not least by allowing BoS to become the only one of their retail brands with a presence in Scotland and aligning its retail product offer very closely with Lloyds rather than Halifax as previously.
More likely is not wanting to trigger a stampede on withdrawals due to relatively weakened FCA protections - a customer can hold £85k with BOS (or Halifax or Birmingham Midshires) and £85k with Lloyds (or Scottish Widows) and in the event of a catastrophic failure of the entirety of LBG they would be protected for the full £170k. If they were to use the same license that protection would shrink to £85k.
Good point about the FSCS protection being per license, but again that didn’t stop Virgin Money and CYBG combining into one license, nor did it give NatWest much pause for thought in their restructuring of Ulster Bank - although that was part of a wider review of Ulster Bank operations, involving the shutdown of Ulster Bank ROI.
That’s true, but then in old fashioned terms Ulster and Natwest never competed for deposits on the same high street in the way Lloyds and Halifax (in particular) do, sometimes side by side.
Also the memories of queues outside Northern Rock are fading at this point.
I think it’s more likely there is some grandfathered thing or other that’s associated with the Lloyds license tbh (like noteprinting, but obviously not that).
Yes, although Halifax doesn’t really seem to come into it because the Bank of Scotland separation is much more likely to be about retaining some semblance of independence for Bank of Scotland and an association with Scotland through being registered there.
Halifax, as merely a brand of the Group, just so “happens” to be under the BOS umbrella. It could very easily be under Lloyds instead. The separate brands thing historically has mostly been because they serve different customer bases and the brands resonate with different demographics.
It is traded on the London Stock Exchange but then so are companies from across the globe.
You can see on that same page the Lloyds Bank plc (which is a division of Lloyds Banking Group and a sibling of Bank of Scotland plc, not a child) is registered in London.