I was a little saddened by an email I received from Santander today. It was a ‘personal’ message from the CEO (Santander has 14 million customers in the UK, so not really very personal) about TSB. It is now part of Santander, apparently, making Santander the third largest bank in the UK.
In the 19th century it was quite common for banks to go bust and trustee savings banks were a safe place for savers to store their money. The safety came from their ‘mutual’ structure (similar to building societies) meaning that they were owned by their membership and could not face hostile takeovers by carpetbaggers.
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| Ruthwell’s trustee savings bank, now a museum |
The first ever trustee savings bank was established in Ruthwell in the Scottish Borders in 1810. Others followed and by the 1970s there were large numbers across the UK. These merged and restructured through the 1970s and in 1986 they amalgamated into the modern Trustee Savings Bank, a public limited company on London’s Stock Exchange.
Since then, TSB has been bought and sold and is now a part - just a brand - of Santander. Another piece of history is gone.