Halifax bank is a subsidiary of the Bank of Scotland, rather its brand in United Kingdom. They are one of the largest provider of saving accounts and residential mortgages. 

It was formed in 1853 as The Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society which was the largest building society at the time. It expanded through various mergers and acquisitions. It was merged with Halifax Equitable Building Society in 1928 which was then the second largest building society. It was renamed as Halifax Building Society. During the 1980’s it expanded into housing mortgages, credit cards and current accounts. It was merged with Leeds Permanent Building Society to become a public limited company in 1995 and started trading at the London Stock Exchange in 1997 as Halifax plc. In 1999, it acquired ComparetheLoan and Birmingham Midshires Building Society. It established a telephone and internet based bank named as Intelligent Finance in the year 2000. it was merged with the Bank of Scotland in 2001 for £10.8 billion and became Halifax Bank of Scotland. Later on in the year 2009 it was acquired by Lloyds Banking Group and became its subsidiary. 

One of the innovative things that Halifax Bank has done is introducing a new concept in advertising. This concept became so popular later on that it was adopted by many other banks and many other organizations. There were basically two concepts, one was to use the employees of the bank in the advertisements and second was to use famous songs with their words changed. The employees sing those famous songs with their wordings changed. For example in one of its advertisements of its which is basically a launch ad for its Halifax Regular Saver account holds the same pattern. The office staff is singing a song with the words ‘we are saving’ in the tune of a song ‘we are sailing’ sung by famous singer Rod Stewart. The ad was a hit and was very effective as regards to the campaign. This is a very good concept of taking employees as the key figures in the ads because it becomes more effective if your own employees are delivering a message and endorsing a product instead of some outside models. This was then adopted by the Bank of Scotland when it acquired Halifax Bank. It was even adopted by the Halifax Bank (Ireland). The Halifax Ireland re branded itself in the year 2006 from the Bank of Scotland. 

Now coming to another outstanding feature related to Halifax Bank. This unique feature is the halifax bank’s charity credit cards. You must have heard of the donations and charities that an organization makes in order to help and benefit the community in which it is working. Halifax Bank has three types of credit cards that it offers and two of them are the charity credit cards.  They are affiliated with some charitable organization. This is an effort on the part of the bank to help the ones in need. Not only that, the bank also want to make the customer feel with every purchase they are making, they are also helping someone who is around them and who is badly in need. Once you have purchased the Halifax Bank credit card, you should be sure that now you are not using your credit card for your own benefit rather you are doing it for someone else too. When you use the card for the first time, the bank makes a large donation. From then on every time you purchase something, the bank makes some donation. These two charity credit cards are associated with the NSPCC and the Cancer Research UK.