Welcome back, TSB: your founder’s spirit is alive and well and living in Airdrie

A big hello to the revived Trustee Savings Bank — the spin-off of 631 Lloyds branches that were going to be sold to the Co-operative Bank to fulfil EU conditions for the bailout of Lloyds after its catastrophic takeover of HBOS. The new entity starts life with 4.6 million personal and small-business customers, a clean balance sheet, no investment banking arm and no foreign skeletons in its cupboard. That all sounds promising, but those of us who have long argued for a break-up of mega-banks and a return to relationship-driven high-street finance will watch closely to see whether the new TSB’s slogan, ‘Welcome back to local banking’, turns out to be just that, or a real mantra for change.

The crash of its online banking site within minutes of launch was an unhappy omen, as is the fact that ‘TSB’ is the bank’s full name, thus suppressing ‘trustee’ and ‘savings’ which might have offered useful reminders of how local banking ought to be run.