Halifax Bank

Halifax plc is the largest personal financial services provider in the UK offering a wide range of residential mortgages and savings accounts options. A commercial bank, Halifax is part of the HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) Group. And before 1997, Halifax Building Society was the largest building society in UK. The bank gets it name from the Halifax town where it is headquartered.

Established in 1853, Halifax was formed as the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society. The idea, as with other early building societies, was to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the local working class. The fundamental was simple – while investors with excess cash invested in the society and received interest, those in need of money could take up loans to buy houses or property.

Halifax chose an organic form to grow while many other UK building societies grew larger and stronger by acquiring and merging with other companies. Halifax opened its branches throughout the United Kingdom and by 1913 Halifax Bank became UK’s biggest building society. A commendable feat especially since it charted its own unique growth path. Subsequent to becoming the largest building society Halifax opened its very first office in London in 1924 and in Scotland in 1928.

This new Halifax plc became the 5 th largest bank in the United Kingdom based on its market capitalisation. During its long and interesting history, Halifax expanded to grow bigger and stronger by acquiring the Clerical Medical Fund Managers, a life insurance company in the UK in 1996, and the Birmingham Midshires Building Society and ComparetheLoan in 1999. Gauging that technology was the mainstay, Halifax plc established a telephone and internet based online bank called Intelligent Finance in 2000.

The year 2001 was a landmark year for Halifax Bank. Coming under pressure from the wave of consolidation that was sweeping the banking market in UK, Halifax merged with Bank of Scotland for £10.8 billion. The new group born from the merger of the two giants was named Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), with Edinburgh becoming the headquarters. The new entity retained the names of both Halifax and Bank of Scotland and uses them as brand names to date.

But Halifax branches in Scotland were merged with the Bank of Scotland. Currently, the Halifax brand is only been used to promote mortgages and the range of savings products. Moreover, the Halifax Bank’s branches across the UK are branded under the Bank of Scotland for corporate banking. Another interesting development took place in 2006, when the Bank of Scotland in Ireland, also the primary retail bank in Ireland, announced that as part of its re-branding exercise for retail customers, it would use Halifax’s name. The main reason for this has been the exposure of the Irish people to Halifax advertising on Irish TV among other important reasons.

Halifax Bank offers manycredit cards for its retail customers and prime among them are Halifax One Card, Partner Cards, Marriott Rewards Visa Card, ipoints Loyalty Card, and a few Charity Cards.