wisconsin troops home

Familiar brands such as Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley are about to disappear

Formula one racing driver Lewis Hamilton and the onset of the global banking crisis have conspired to add Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and Bradford & Bingley to the list of bank and building society brands eradicated from the high street in recent years.

Santander, the Spanish owner of the three brands, intends to plant its own name on the high street by the end of 2010 by which time its flame logo should be hanging over 1,300 branches and bring an end to a combined 475 years of financial history.

Even before the latest announcement from Santander, data from the British Bankers’ Association shows that in the past 20 years, 17 high street names have collapsed in to 10.

During the same period, the overall number of branches has fallen from 16,873 to 9,696 as pubs and housing developments have sprung up in former bank branches which have fallen victim to consolidation in cost savings in the banking sector.

António Horta-Osório, chief executive of Santander’s UK businesses, insists that branch closures are not the purpose of the exercise even though all three brands are near each other on many high streets. While overlap will result in some closures, he is adamant that the overall number will remain the same.

He acknowledges that the success of the Hamilton sponsorship, which runs out at the end of the year, and the weakness of domestic banks in the last quarter of last year has helped the bank, which attracted customers to Abbey because of the perceived strength of its parent, reach the decision about the rebranding exercise.

Each of the three brands has been existence for more than 150 years and can trace their roots back to the original building society movement. Abbey, then known as Abbey National, was the first society to demutalise in 1989 when it floated on the stockmarket and blazed a trail for many others.

The first of Santander’s renaming exercises will take place next month when credit cards bearing the Spanish bank’s name will be issued to customers in the UK for the first time. But, the process will take 18 months to complete as A&L, which it bought last year, will not be fully integrated until the end of 2010 by which time £12m is likely to have been spent. Abbey has already signalled 1,900 jobs will go as it saves £180m through integration.

Alex Potter, banks analyst at stockbroker Collins Stewart, noted the diverging views on branding that is taking place across the high street. Royal Bank of Scotland continues to use a multi- brand strategy through NatWest as does Lloyds Banking Group, which already operated a range of brands even before HBOS joined the group earlier this year.

But HSBC’s hexagonal red and white symbol is now a familiar sight on the high street after being introduced 10 years ago to replace the golden Griffin used by Midland Bank. HSBC took seven years to impose its brand on the high street after rescuing Midland, while Santander has taken five years to remove Abbey but has worked more quickly on B&B and A&L.

The high street is already braced for change following the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB at the start of the year. Lloyds Banking Group is keeping an array of brands but analysts believe it may end up closing some branches as it endeavours to cut costs through the troubled merger.

The biggest changes to the high street will take place in Scotland where only the Bank of Scotland name will be used, wiping out any Lloyds TSB branches. On high streets elsewhere, the Halifax brand will co-exist alongside Lloyds TSB’s black horse.

Lloyds, though, has already been responsible for a number of brands disappearing from the high street, even if they remained for marketing purposes. Standalone TSB branches disappeared a decade ago.

Other brands to have left the high street include National & Provincial, merged into Abbey, and Birmingham Midshires, consumed by Halifax.

Industry experts noted that Santander would need to avoid any IT hiccups during the integration, while customer group Which? hoped that the poor customer service for which Abbey is sometimes associated will be improved. While the integration will mean that the three Santander brands will now only offer one product range, the bank insisted this would not lessen competition but improve it as the products on offer were often top of their class.

By the end of 2010, Santander will need to make a decision about how customers who have deposits in two or more of the current brands will be impacted under the £50,000 government guarantee when they are merged and operating under a single name. Currently customers of Abbey, B&B and its online bank Cahoot are covered separately from A&L, which means a single customer could have deposits up to the limit protected in both.