Power on sale at Lloyds branches

LLOYDS TSB will this week unveil plans to sell gas, electricity and telecoms to customers alongside financial services, despite stiff opposition from the bank's staff.

Lloyds TSB Group Union, which represents most of the workforce, said its members, already under enormous pressure to meet business targets, were now expected to sell utilities as well. It added that the need to find new sources of income suggested that the bank, which failed last year to pull off a takeover of Abbey National, had lost its way.

Lloyds will launch a three-month trial of the utility service this week in Wolverhampton. Products will be sold as part of a personal financial review offered to customers and the switch of suppliers will take four to six weeks. However, the tie-up is not thought to be with Centrica, owners of British Gas and the AA, whose Goldfish financial services arm is a joint venture with Lloyds TSB.

The move is part of Lloyds' attempt to become a life services brand rather than just a bank, but the move could be scuppered by protests from staff.

Mark Brown, assistant general secretary of the Group Union, has written to members, warning that trying to spread the bank's core financial brand across other services could be dangerous.

He said: 'The bank's proposals to sell gas, electricity and telephony services could, if extended across the national network, seriously and irrevocably undermine the brands it has spent so much money acquiring or building up. We would urge the management to think long and hard about this new strategy.'

Woolwich, part of Barclays, already offers customers of its Open Plan account gas and electricity services through a partnership with energy group Amerada Hess.

But Lloyds is the first High Street bank to consider offering the service across its branch network. The new services will be familiar to Lloyds' new finance director Philip Hampton, who recently joined the bank from BT and previously oversaw the break-up of British Gas.