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santander rebrand gathers pace
Published: 11/01/2010 |
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From Monday 11 January Abbey and Bradford & Bingley (savings) will be rebranded as Santander UK plc, with Alliance & Leicester following suit before the end of 2010. Andrew Hagger of Moneynet.co.uk looks at what the future may hold. Whilst some customers may find losing the familiar name tag of Bradford & Bingley or Abbey a little unsettling, I don’t think they’ve got too much to worry about. Santander is a global bank with a prudent track record and has been able to concentrate on business as usual whilst some competitors were distracted by the bank bailout fiasco last year. The new combined bank will have around 25 million UK customers, so should be a major financial force on the high street and able to compete with some of the bigger and more established banks in this country. There has been a noticeable difference in the competitiveness of products offered since Santander took control of Abbey with the Zero credit card and more recently the Zero charges current account option showing that they are serious about increasing market share. For many years both Abbey and Alliance and Leicester have been extremely competitive in the current account and personal loan sectors and there’s no reason that this rebrand should see that competitive edge diminish. There may be concerns regarding lack of competition with three well known banking names disappearing from our high streets during 2010 and being replaced by the single Santander brand, however with some new providers potentially entering the fray, possibly as soon as later this year (e.g. Virgin Bank, Tesco Bank, Metro Bank etc) the Spanish giant can’t afford to become complacent or reduce the competitiveness of its product pricing. One of the biggest challenges for Santander is to improve its reputation for customer service. It’s an area to which they have paying particular attention, including the introduction of the Partenon computer platform which allows staff to access all customer information from a single point. Service is equally as important as price in many people’s eyes, so it’s an area that Santander will have to get right. |
