Customer marks Royal banking landmark

To mark Her Majesty The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, Lloyds Bank has identified customers who opened their account on the same day as the Queen’s Coronation and on that date in the six subsequent decades.

Mrs Barbara Brearley, 84, from Hagworthingham was selected as a ‘Crown Customer’, having opened her bank account on the 10-year anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation in June 1963.

She recently spent the day with Lloyds Bank staff at her local branch in Horncastle and was awarded a special Fortnum and Mason’s celebratory hamper to recognise the royal connection to when she started banking with Lloyds.

Reflecting on her life over the past 70 years, Mrs Brearley said: “I remember vividly when the Queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1953.

"I was just 15 at the time and we were watching the event on a television that was the size of a postage stamp! Since then, I’ve seen all the Queen’s major milestones.

"For me, the most memorable royal moment had to be when Prince Charles visited a football game I was also at in Ashbourne in 2003. It was just lovely to be at the same event as him.”

When it comes to the way Mrs Brearley has learned to manage her money over the last seven decades, she said that her childhood and school days were instrumental in setting the foundations. “When I was a child, I always had a moneybox. At school we had to put our money into the ‘bank,’ we had a ‘chequebook’ and if we wanted money, we had to make sure we’d have enough to tide us over to the end of term.” When asked for the money advice Mrs Brearley has tried to live by, its “don’t have it, if you can’t afford it.”

Across the country, when asked to consider the best piece of financial advice they had ever received, only 3% of Brits stated spend like there is no tomorrow. The nation is much more likely to agree that paying into your pension as early as possible is a better piece of advice, with almost a quarter (24%) of 55–64-year-olds stating this is the best advice they’d ever received.

Jo Harris, Managing Director, Lloyds Bank said: " Over the course of the Queen’s reign, the changes across all aspects of life, including our finances, have been significant. Throughout the past seven decades, we’ve experienced so many of these changes by the side of our customers and, whether it was the introduction of debit cards and ATMs or banking online, we’ll continue to support customers in managing their money how and when they want.”