What’s happening?

Its taken a while for Santander to ‘assimilate’ Alliance & Leicester into it’s business, as it was back in July 2010 that they first announced the integration of accounts between the two banks.  However, we’ve now been informed that they are currently switching Alliance & Leicester account holders over to the Santander online banking service.

Santander have also confirmed that this move is to “make sure that our customers across both brands get a consistent and rewarding online banking experience”, and that the delay in migration was to allow for features in the Alliance & Leicester service to combined into their own.

The only real change from a login/security perspective is that the Alliance & Leicester transactions deemed as ‘high-risk’ required a password for confirmation, whereas the Santander service  uses the One Time Passcode (OTP).  To find out more info on this have a look at the FAQ’s.

What do I do?

When you next logon to your Alliance & Leicester online banking you’ll be presented with the following screen asking if you wish to migrate to the Santander service now, or  if you want to do this at another time.  It’s good that they have given you this choice, as it allows you to do it in your own time rather than being forced to rush through the process.

The move is fairly simple and just takes a couple of clicks to complete.  Once you click the Move now button, you’ll be directed to one more screen:

You probably know your user id already as you need this to log into the Alliance & Leicester banking service, but probably best to take note of it anyway!  The final step is to just click the ‘continue to Santander.co.uk’ button and your all done.