Lloyds Banking Group is reportedly poised to scrap the Halifax brand it rescued in the financial crisis, according to reports.

Halifax, which started life as a building society in 1852, could be gone before end of the year with customers being migrated over to Lloyds Bank.

Customers will no longer be able to open new accounts via Halifax's app or website, with the name disappearing entirely by October, industry insiders told The Sun.

A Lloyds Banking Group spokesman told This is Money: 'We regularly look at the role our brands play in supporting our customers.

'Our banking customers can already use any Lloyds, Halifax or Bank of Scotland branch, and see any of their products and services in any of their apps – there are no changes for our customers today.'

Lloyds Banking Group also owns Bank of Scotland and has cut branches heavily in the past decade.

Earlier in the year, it announced a further 95 sites would shut between May 2026 and March 2027 – 53 Lloyds branches, 31 Halifax and 11 Bank of Scotland, leaving just 610 open compared to around 1,500 in 2015.

Halifax demutualised and launched on the stockmarket in 1997 taking it from building society to bank, creating 7.5million new shareholders in the process. 

The former Halifax Building Society members were given a minimum of 200 free shares if they had £100 or more in an account, landing them windfalls of at least £1,469.

Halifax merged with Bank of Scotland to form HBOS plc in 2001 and grew substantially. 

Its shares soared as it became a dominant presence in UK banking, which was proving a lucrative business at the time.

It became part of TV advertising lore in the early 2000s thanks to branch member, 'Halifax Howard', who starred in a series of ads including a parodied version of Mousse T and Tom Jones' Sex Bomb to advertise the phrase: 'Extra, extra, I know you want more.'

But seven years after it was formed, HBOS was no more. It was acquired by Lloyds in the financial crisis in a government-brokered rescue deal, after it crashed in the credit crunch with deep exposure to the collapsing UK property market. 

Halifax Bank of Scotland shares hit a peak of £11.50 in February 2007, but when the Lloyds deal was announced on 17 September 2008 HBOS shares had nosedived to below 180p. 

Lloyds says no final decisions have been made over the future of Halifax and it has recently invested in the office at Trinity Road in Halifax.

It says if it did make any changes, there would be no change to customers' account numbers, nor would there be any impact to Financial Services Compensation Scheme protection – currently £120,000 per individual.

Lloyds and Halifax operate in the same market in England/Wales while Bank of Scotland is its only brand in Scotland.

If it is culled, Halifax could join TSB in disappearing from the High Street. 

TSB has been a brand name in Britain for 216 years but is rumoured to go after Santander's £2.65billion acquisition of the bank earlier this month.

Santander is gearing up to axe the TSB name and run the combined businesses under the name Santander UK.

TSB employs 5,000 staff and has approximately 175 branches across Britain. The TSB name dates back the Trustee Savings Bank starting in a tiny hamlet in Scotland's Dumfriesshire in 1810.

Santander declined to confirm whether the TSB brand would either be removed or be retained.

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