Who Owns Lloyds Bank?

Lloyds Bank has no owner. It belongs to Lloyds Banking Group plc, listed in London with no controlling shareholder — the British government’s 43% stake from the 2008 bailout was fully sold by May 2017. Companies House records Lloyds Bank plc as 00002065, incorporated 20 April 1865 — among the lowest company numbers in existence. Its parent is registered in Scotland. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns Lloyds Bank?

Lloyds Banking Group plc owns it, and nobody owns Lloyds Banking Group. Its shares are widely held by institutions and by a very large number of private shareholders.

The bank is LLOYDS BANK PLC (00002065), incorporated 20 April 1865 and registered at Gresham Street, London. Its previous names are Lloyds TSB Bank plc and, further back, Lloyds, Barnetts and Bosanquets Bank.

A four-digit company number is exceptional. Companies House issues numbers sequentially, so 00002065 places Lloyds among the earliest registrations under the Companies Acts — older than BP’s 00102498, Paramount’s British companies and Sunderland’s football club.

Its person with significant control is Lloyds Banking Group plc, registered number SC095000, at 75% or more of shares and votes.

Legal entity and parent group

The SC prefix is the detail most people find surprising. Lloyds Banking Group plc is registered in Scotland, not England — a consequence of the 2009 HBOS rescue, which was structured so that the enlarged group took the Scottish registration.

So Britain’s largest retail banking group, headquartered in London and named after a Birmingham bank, is legally a Scottish company. The group considered moving its registration to England around the 2014 independence referendum and did not.

Lloyds Banking Group plc is exempt from the PSC regime as a listed company, so Companies House holds no ownership record for it — the register names the parent and stops.

Regulatory status and authorised firm

This is the section that matters financially, and Lloyds is the most important case on this site.

The group operates two separate ring-fenced banks, each its own authorised firm:

• Lloyds Bank plc — covering the Lloyds brand
• Bank of Scotland plc — covering Bank of Scotland and Halifax

The FSCS protects £120,000 per person per authorised firm, not per brand — a limit raised from £85,000 on 1 December 2025, with £240,000 on joint accounts.

The consequence is precise and worth getting right. Halifax and Bank of Scotland share one limit between them, because they are one authorised firm. Lloyds is a separate firm, so money with Lloyds is protected separately from money with Halifax.

That is the opposite of the position at Barclays, where Tesco Bank’s deposits now sit under Barclays Bank UK’s single licence and share its limit, and at Virgin Money, where three brands are one firm. Same group, different licences — and only the Financial Services Register tells you which is which. It is the authoritative source, not Companies House.

Shareholders and controlling interests

No person or company controls Lloyds Banking Group. The largest holders are index managers and institutions holding on behalf of their funds’ investors, and no holder approaches the 25% at which UK rules would record significant control.

The holding that mattered has gone. In the 2008–09 financial crisis the British government injected capital and ended up with around 43% of Lloyds — the taxpayer as the bank’s largest shareholder. The stake was sold down from 2013 and fully disposed of in May 2017, at a small reported profit on the original outlay.

Lloyds also has an unusually large retail shareholder base, a legacy of the TSB flotation and of the demutualisations that created Halifax — hundreds of thousands of individuals holding small parcels of shares.

Group companies and brands

Lloyds Banking Group owns Lloyds Bank, Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Scottish Widows, MBNA, Birmingham Midshires and Black Horse.

TSB is no longer in the group. It was separated in 2013 under EU state aid conditions imposed because of the bailout, floated in 2014 and bought by Spain’s Sabadell in 2015 — so the “TSB” in the old Lloyds TSB name now belongs to a different owner entirely, while the previous name survives on the register.

Halifax was a building society that demutualised in 1997, merged with Bank of Scotland to form HBOS in 2001, and was absorbed into Lloyds when HBOS nearly failed in 2008. A saver who thinks of Halifax as a separate institution is describing something that ended eighteen years ago.

Sources and verification

The company numbers, the 20 April 1865 incorporation, both previous names and the Lloyds Banking Group PSC entry are Companies House records and can be checked directly.

Two limits. Companies House records nothing about who owns Lloyds Banking Group, because listed companies are exempt — shareholders are disclosed through major holdings notifications to the exchange and the annual report instead. And the register says nothing about which bank holds your money: the two ring-fenced banks and their brand allocations are matters for the Financial Services Register and the banks’ own terms, and that is where anyone spreading deposits should check. Companies House does not verify most filed information.