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Halifax earns a 3.0 out of 5 rating from BankingGeek for 2026. It remains a solid, fee-free everyday bank backed by full FSCS protection and a highly-rated mobile app, but two things have changed the calculation this year: Halifax stopped opening accounts for new customers on 1 July 2026, and Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed the entire Halifax brand is being retired. This review covers the current account range, fees, safety and customer reviews, and explains exactly what the rebrand means if you already bank with Halifax.
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What Is Halifax?
Halifax began life in 1853 as the Halifax Permanent Building and Investment Society, founded in the West Yorkshire town it took its name from. It grew fast. By 1913 it was the UK’s largest building society, a position it held for decades before demutualising in 1997, when it became Halifax plc and joined the FTSE 100 as a listed bank.
Halifax merged with Bank of Scotland in 2001 to form HBOS. When HBOS ran into serious trouble during the 2008 financial crisis, Lloyds TSB stepped in, and the merger completed in January 2009 to create Lloyds Banking Group. Today Halifax is not a separate legal bank at all – it is a trading brand of Bank of Scotland plc, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group, alongside the Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland brands.
The Halifax Brand Is Being Retired – What This Actually Means
This is the single most important fact for anyone researching Halifax in 2026. Lloyds Banking Group has confirmed it is phasing out the 173-year-old Halifax name and moving every Halifax customer onto the Lloyds brand, as part of a wider strategy to run its UK retail banking under one consumer brand instead of three.
- New accounts stopped on 1 July 2026. Halifax is no longer taking on new customers. If you are shopping for a bank account today, you cannot open one with Halifax – only existing customers can add further products.
- The Halifax app closes on 31 October 2026. After that date you will no longer be able to log in through the Halifax app or website; banking moves to the Lloyds app instead.
- Branches rebrand during 2027. Halifax’s roughly 190 branches will either be relabelled as Lloyds branches or folded into a nearby Lloyds branch. Lloyds has said no branches will close outright and no jobs will be lost as a direct result.
- Existing accounts are unaffected for now. Sort codes, account numbers, interest rates and product features stay the same during the transition – Lloyds says customers keep everything they currently have while the brand changes underneath them.
- Bank of Scotland is not part of this change. It remains the primary brand for customers in Scotland.
In practice, this makes Halifax an odd bank to review in the traditional sense. Everything below still applies if you already hold a Halifax account and want to know what you are getting until the switch to Lloyds completes. If you are choosing a new bank, Halifax simply is not an option any more, and the fairest comparison is against Lloyds itself – see our Lloyds Classic Account review – since that is the account most Halifax features will effectively become.
Halifax Current Accounts at a Glance
Halifax’s personal current account range was still fully live for existing customers as of September 2026, even though new sign-ups have stopped. Here is the full lineup.
| Account | Monthly fee | Headline feature | Arranged overdraft (EAR variable) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reward Current Account | £3, waived if you pay in £1,500/month | Up to 3.00% AER on balances of £4,000-£5,000 | 0% on the first £100, then 29.9% |
| Ultimate Reward Current Account | £19 | Travel insurance, mobile/gadget and home emergency cover | 0% on the first £100, then 29.9% |
| Current Account | £0 | Free everyday banking, no reward or interest | 29.9% |
| Basic Account | £0 | No credit check, for customers who can’t get a standard account | Not available |
| Student Current Account | £0 | Interest-free arranged overdraft up to £1,500 | 0% up to the arranged limit |
We already have a dedicated deep-dive on the flagship account: the Halifax Current Account review. This review looks at Halifax as a whole bank, including how it compares with its own sibling brands now that the rebrand is under way.
The Reward Current Account, in Detail
The Reward Current Account is Halifax’s main current account and the one most existing customers hold. It charges £3 a month, waived automatically if you pay in at least £1,500. To earn credit interest you also need to keep two active direct debits running from the account each month.
Meeting those conditions pays up to 3.00% AER (variable) on the portion of your balance between £4,000 and £5,000; money outside that band earns nothing. Note that Halifax removed the account’s old £5 monthly cash reward and free cinema ticket perk in late 2025, so the interest tier is now the only ongoing benefit – a materially weaker offer than the account had a year earlier, and worth knowing if a comparison site or an old bookmark still quotes the £5 cashback.
Savings Accounts
Halifax’s savings range sits alongside the current accounts and is also still open to existing customers. The Everyday Saver is the easy-access option most people are pointed towards when they open a current account – we cover its live rate and terms in a separate Halifax Everyday Saver review. Halifax also offers fixed-term savings bonds, a Help to Buy-style ISA range and a Regular Saver reserved for current account holders, all standard for a high-street bank of this size.
Customer Reviews: Trustpilot vs the App Store
Halifax’s reputation looks completely different depending on where you read reviews, and it is worth understanding why. On Trustpilot, Halifax holds a 1.7 out of 5 TrustScore from 6,335 reviews, with 81% of those reviews rated 1-star and only 12% rated 5-star. The recurring complaints are long call-centre wait times, cards or payments blocked without a clear explanation, difficulty getting back into online banking after a security check and slow resolution once a problem is escalated.
The Halifax Mobile Banking app tells a very different story: it holds 4.86 out of 5 on the Apple App Store from around 7,200 ratings, with users praising day-to-day reliability, ease of transfers and biometric login. The gap is not unusual for a large UK bank – Trustpilot reviews skew heavily towards people who had a bad experience with customer service or a blocked payment, while app-store ratings measure whether the software itself works well for routine tasks. Read Trustpilot as a warning about what happens when something goes wrong and needs a phone call, and the app rating as a fair reflection of everyday use.
Is Your Money Safe with Halifax?
Yes. Halifax operates under Bank of Scotland plc’s UK banking licence and is regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. Eligible deposits are protected up to £120,000 per person by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS), the limit that rose from £85,000 on 1 December 2025.
One detail matters more for Halifax than for most banks: that £120,000 limit is shared across Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland Private Banking, Lloyds and Lloyds Bank, because they all sit under the same banking licence. If you hold money in a Halifax account and a Lloyds or Bank of Scotland account at the same time, the combined total – not each account separately – is what is protected up to £120,000. Spreading savings across, say, Halifax and a genuinely separate banking group (rather than Halifax and Lloyds) is the only way to get a second full FSCS allowance.
Halifax vs Lloyds vs Bank of Scotland
With the rebrand under way, the most useful comparison for Halifax in 2026 isn’t a rival challenger bank – it’s the sibling brands it is merging into.
| Feature | Halifax | Lloyds | Bank of Scotland |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part of | Lloyds Banking Group | Lloyds Banking Group | Lloyds Banking Group |
| Taking new customers? | No, stopped 1 July 2026 | Yes | Yes (mainly Scotland) |
| Standard current account fee | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Reward-style account | Reward Current Account, up to 3.00% AER | Club Lloyds, tiered interest and perks | Vantage/Reward-style accounts vary |
| FSCS protection | £120,000, shared across the group | £120,000, shared across the group | £120,000, shared across the group |
| Long-term future | Brand retiring by 2027 | Becomes the group’s main consumer brand | Continues for Scotland |
Because Halifax, Lloyds and Bank of Scotland are all part of the same group and share the same FSCS protection, switching between them is really a change of app and branding rather than a change of underlying bank. If you are outside Scotland and need to open a new account today, Lloyds is the direct like-for-like replacement for what Halifax used to offer.
Should You Switch Away from Halifax?
Not urgently. Nothing about your account, interest rate, or protection changes until Lloyds actually migrates your login to the Lloyds app, and Lloyds has been clear that sort codes and account numbers carry over. The one date to act on is 31 October 2026, when the standalone Halifax app stops working – make sure you have followed Lloyds’ migration instructions before then so you are not locked out of online banking.
If you are weighing up whether to switch banks entirely rather than stay for the Lloyds transition, it is worth knowing Halifax does not currently run a cash switching bonus, unlike several competitors and its own sister brand Bank of Scotland, which was offering £175 to new switchers earlier in 2026. Our current account switch offers guide tracks the live cash bonuses across UK banks, and our best bank account UK guide compares Halifax against every major alternative if you decide a clean switch makes more sense than riding out the rebrand.
Halifax Review 2026: Our Verdict
Halifax earns a 3.0 out of 5 from BankingGeek. Judged on the product alone, it is an unremarkable but workable high-street bank. It offers fee-free everyday accounts, a reasonable interest-paying Reward account for people who can meet the pay-in condition, a strong mobile app and the same FSCS protection as any other UK bank. The Trustpilot complaints around customer service and blocked payments are real and worth weighing if you rely on phone support, but they are broadly in line with what other large UK banks receive.
What actually caps the score in 2026 is the brand’s own future. You cannot open a new Halifax account, the app has a firm shutdown date, and every product will carry the Lloyds name within a couple of years. For existing customers, there is no need to do anything drastic – just be ready for the 31 October 2026 app cutover. For anyone comparing banks from scratch, Halifax is no longer a genuine option, and Lloyds is the natural next stop.