It looks as though life is becoming much simpler for anyone in the UK who may be wanting to open a bank account, or is looking to take out a mortgage or a personal loan in the not too distant future, as they will not have to shop around quite as many potential providers, following the news last week that Lloyds TSB has agreed to buy the Halifax Bank of Scotland group for £12.2 billion.

Lloyds TSB has described the take over as an emergency bid to rescue the UK’s biggest provider of mortgages and homeowner loans and although this may be good news for the long term survival of the HBoS group, we appear to be rapidly heading in the direction where there will only be two or three giant banks in the high street to choose from, effectively giving a monopoly to the banks and presenting the average consumer far less choice and probably higher costs on bank accounts and loans.

Under normal circumstances, this take over would have been stopped by the competition commission on the basis that it would create too much of a monopoly. However, the Government have intervened, using a “national interest” loophole within banking legislation to override the monopoly rules.

Lloyds TSB have said that they will cut costs in the new group by around £1 billion by 2011, which inevitably means that there will be a significant level of redundancies and branch closures over the course of the next couple of years. A spokesman for Lloyds TSB said that there would be “elimination of branch duplication” (meaning branch closures) and that “Significant cost savings can be made by combining the networks and back offices of Lloyds TSB and HBoS” (meaning redundancies and head office closures).

As far as names go for the new banking giant, “Lloyds Trustee Savings Bank Halifax Bank of Scotland” may be a little bit of a mouthful for most of us and a snappier name might well be in order, perhaps an anagram of all the initials could make up a suitable name, one that’s not too rude…answers on a post card please!