Bank of Scotland
commercial and clearing bank based in Edinburgh, Scotland
Bank of Scotland plc (Scottish Gaelic: Banca na h-Alba) is a commercial and clearing bank based in Edinburgh, Scotland, that is part of the Lloyds Banking Group.
The bank had a total asset amount of over £339 billion in 2025. The bank, established by the Parliament of Scotland in 1695, aimed to develop Scotland's trade with other countries and to create a stable banking system in the country. The first bank to be established in Scotland, it is the oldest operational bank in the country, the ninth oldest bank in continuous operation globally, as well as the longest continuous issuer of banknotes in the world.
With a history dating to the end of the 17th century, the Bank of Scotland was the first bank to have been established in Scotland, and, it is the fifth-oldest extant bank in the United Kingdom (the Bank of England having been established one year earlier). It is the only commercial institution created by the Parliament of Scotland, when Scotland was an independent, sovereign state, to remain in existence. It was the first bank in Europe to successfully print its own banknotes, and it continues to print its own sterling banknotes under legal arrangements that allow Scottish banks to issue currency.
In June 2006, the HBOS Group Reorganisation Act 2006 was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, allowing the bank's structure to be simplified. As a result, The Governor and Company of the Bank of Scotland became Bank of Scotland plc on 17 September 2007. Bank of Scotland has been a subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group since 19 January 2009, when HBOS was acquired by Lloyds TSB.
History
Establishment
During the 1690s, public finances and economic prospects of the country were largely uncertain, with credit proving difficult to gain and cash being in relative short supply.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bank of Scotland” as commercial and clearing bank based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q627381. VIAF identifies the subject as 154128259. The Library of Congress control number is n83178761. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 1695, 2006 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bank of Scotland” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.