TSB set to make high street return

The new TSB bank will appear on the high street from next month when Lloyds o f f l o a d s 631 branches and 8million accounts to meet European competition rules.

Under a £30million rebranding campaign, TSB will offer the same products as Lloyds initially, with new deals expected later.

Customers will be able to use their existing passwords on their new online banking website – tsb.co.uk – but will not be able to log in until September 8, the day before the new TSB banks open their doors.

These customers were initially expecting to be transferred to the Co-operative Bank, but the deal collapsed earlier this year and Lloyds now plans to float the TSB business in the middle of 2014.

Consumers who are unhappy about making the move can have requests to stay with Lloyds granted, and 4,000 have done this already.

However, 600 customers have made an unprompted decision that they want to move to TSB.

Despite TSB being trumpeted as “Britain’s newest high- street bank”, the name, which is associated with encouraging the lesswell-off to put money aside, has a history going back 200years. TSBdisappeared from the high street as a standalone name in 1995 after merging with Lloyds.

Someearly indications of how TSB intends to set out its stall suggest that the bank aims to combine a back-to-basics customercentred ethos with an “appetite for change”. TSB chief executive Paul Pester previously led the team that created Virgin Money in the UK.

Some images of the new TSBlogo, with three circles, each containing a letter and set on a blue background, have been released recently and are described as an “evolution” of TSB logos in the past.

More publicity pected next month.

The TSB bank will have about 8,000 staff, made upof thosewhoare moving with the branches and new recruits.

A website set up to help TSB’s recruitment drive describes the bank as “a fresh start” and says it aims to bring “new competition to

is

ex- the UK high street and greater choice for consumers”.

The website says: “We’ll have all the reassurance of scale and expertise that our customers rightly want from their bank, together with the passion and appetite for change our status as Britain’s newest highstreet bank will offer.”