I have been a customer of Lloyds Bank for nearly 20 years now. I switched from Barclays in 1985 after a difference of opinion between myself and the manager (I wanted a loan but he insisted on bothering me with details about how I would pay it back). I currently also have a business bank account with the Bank of Scotland and a savings account with Sainsbury’s Bank.

In the early days I was not particularly impressed with Lloyds Bank, but those were days when I frequently spent more than I earned and emptied the bank’s printers of red ink each time they sent me a letter. Banks are not often friendly places when one is poor. Now that I am a bit better off and maintain my account in the black, things are a bit different.

I do most of my banking online and have found their Internet-based system to be adequate for my needs. It does everything I need it to do and I have found it to be reliable and easy to use. One can pay bills, transfer money, apply for loans and all the sorts of things one would expect from such a system. I do find it slightly frustrating that it logs me out after what I would only consider to be brief period of inactivity. My natural state is one of inactivity and I would prefer to have an option to tell it to keep me logged in until I manually log out.

My remaining communications with the bank usually only amount to receiving the statements each month. I do make the occasional telephone call to the bank and I have not had any problems in that respect; my calls have been answered promptly and my queries have been dealt with efficiently.

I did, however, encounter a situation recently that is worth mentioning.

A few months ago someone managed to lift my card details from an online transaction and tried to make a bet on an online gambling site in my name (I do not know what the bet was but I hope they lost). Lloyds Bank Card Services picked up on this immediately as not being ‘my pattern of spending’ and telephoned me straight away to check. I was quite impressed by this sort of proactive intervention and the speed in which they subsequently managed to get a new card out to me.

In the interests of fairness I will temper my compliments with a criticism. My mother – who is 82 and reasonably well off – was recently refused an account at Lloyds Bank. The excuse they gave was that she did not have a job, but that does not seem to stop them trying to get students to open an account and simply smacks of ageism to me. I was quite appalled at the way she was treated.

So, having pointed out something good and something bad, I will sum up by saying that Lloyds Bank are ‘okay’, but in the much of a muchness that is banking these days it is hard to say that they either stand out or fall behind any of the other banks in any significant way.