Most building societies operate under their own licences, but it's worth double checking if you plan on having money in multiple institutions. Yorkshire Building Society trade under several names including the Chelsea Building Society and Norwich and Peterborough Building Society. We've seen changes in the building society sector too, with Nationwide integrating other brands like Cheshire Building Society, Derbyshire Building Society and Dunfermline Building Society into their main brand. There are over 40 building societies in the UK with the biggest names including: However, we've also seen some banks decide to close their current accounts, with both M&S Bank and Tesco Bank taking that step in 2021.Īs those names suggest, banking isn't the major business of the company and, while they still offer some financial services like savings accounts, everyday banking is not on the agenda. Zopa Bank moved away from their original peer-to-peer lending system to become a fully-fledged bank registered with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Similarly, Metro Bank was founded in 2010 and has become one of the only banks to be opening branches rather than closing them. There have been some notable additions to this list in recent years, with Monzo and Starling becoming major challengers and attracting significant numbers of customers with their mobile-only offer.

Here are the notable single licence banks in the UK: Some banks have their own banking licence such as TSB who were previously part of the Lloyds Banking Group. So, Virgin Money were acquired but then lent their name to the new banking group due to improved name recognition across the country. Their complicated history involves the Virgin Money brand being acquired by CYBG in 2018 and then the Clydesdale Bank and Yorkshire Bank brands being retired in favour of national Virgin Money UK branding. We've also included Virgin Money in this group table despite the fact they only now have one brand. The group name was altered because most business was done under the NatWest branding, but nothing else changed in terms of the group itself. There have been a few changes in recent years, with the RBS Group rebranding as the NatWest Group in mid-2020. To find out whether or not particular banks in the same group share a banking licence, see the Financial Services Compensation Scheme website to check.

Lloyds and tsb