Bank customers beat a path to the doors of HBoS

Sunday Telegraph (London, England)

Paul Farrow

January 4, 2004

MORE people are switching their current accounts to HBoS than to any other high street bank, according to industry figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph.

Last year, 22 per cent of those switching accounts went to HBoS. This compared with 13 per cent to Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest, 11 per cent to Lloyds TSB, and 10 per cent to HSBC. Barclays had the lowest share with just a 9 per cent share of the account-switching market.

The Consumers' Association has estimated that about 1m people switched accounts last year.

HBoS cranked up the current account war in August with the launch of its first "packaged" account, called Extras. The focus was more on perks such as free travel insurance rather than market-beating interest rates on which it had previously based its bid to lure customers from its rivals.

Of the smaller banks and building societies, Nationwide attracted more than 200,000 new customers in the past year, while First Direct (owned by HSBC) claims to be raking in up to 10,000 customers a month. Alliance & Leicester said it had seen seen a 50 per cent increase in the number of people switching from the Big Four.

Last year, research from the Consumers Association indicated that smaller rivals were beating the Big Four high street banks on customer service. Barclays, Lloyds TSB and Natwest all appeared in the lowest category for customer satisfaction.

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