TSB: the new old bank on the high street

A new bank has arrived but its name will be familiar to many people.

A new high street bank has opened its doors, although the name TSB will be a familiar one to many people.

The ‘reboot’ of the Trustee Savings Bank has seen 631 Lloyds TSB and Cheltenham & Gloucester (C&G) branches rebranded and around five million customers holding eight million accounts switched to TSB. Around 8,000 staff are also moving.

Later this month, Lloyds TSB will be rebranded as Lloyds Bank.

The return of TSB has been necessitated by the collapse of the Co-operative Bank’s bid to buy those Lloyds and C&G branches after they were put up for sale due to European competition rules.

Changes start now

The TSB website is now live, although it had crashed early on launch day.

If you’re a Lloyds customer that doesn’t want to move to TSB, you can request to stay put. Around 4,000 people have done this.

Conversely, if you want to move from Lloyds to TSB you can request this too.

Customers can continue to use branches of either bank for the forseeable future.

Initially TSB is offering the same range of products as Lloyds but it is expected to introduce its own soon.

Lloyds TSB currently has some decent products available, including:

• the Platinum 24-Month balance transfer credit card with 0% interest for two years for a 1.5% fee of the balance you're transferring;
• the Platinum 15-Month balance transfer credit card, which offers 15 months with no interest to pay on balance transfers and a market-leading 0.8% balance transfer fee;
• the Classic current account with Vantage, which pays 3% AER interest on balances of between £3,000 and £5,000;
• the Cash Account, which is a basic bank account that comes with a Visa debit card.

Past and present

Despite a long history of TSB banks around the UK, the separate institutions were only amalgamated into regional groups in the 1970s and then into one overall group in 1986 due to a stock market flotation. TSB and Lloyds then merged in 1995, creating the Lloyds TSB brand and removing TSB from the high street.

TSB’s old advertising slogan was “The bank that likes to say yes”. The new bank, in a very deliberate nod to the public mistrust of banks and bankers, is promising to be “fair, ethical and committed” and the return of "local banking". Whether it delivers on those promises remains to be seen.

If it's successful, Lloyds is expected to float the TSB business in mid-2014.

Want to leave?

If you're not happy with the Lloyds and TSB separation, there's never been a better time to switch current account. There are loads of joining and other incentives available from other banks. For more on what's on offer right now, have a look at Current accounts: short term gains vs. long term value.

And from next Monday (16th September), you'll be able to switch account in just seven working days. For more on this, read How to switch your current account in 7 days.

This article has been updated since its original publication

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