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 Martins Bank is first – or almost first – with a number of banking services and
technologies, which is not bad going, when you consider the competition from
the other major banks in the UK. As
the largest of the “small six” clearing banks of the 1960s, Martins can use
its relatively large network of branches and its other interests, in
securities, executor and trustee, unit trusts etc., to act like some of its
larger rivals, taking risks with innovation and new technology to expand both
the size of the Bank, and the range of services it can offer to its
customers. On this page we look at some of these “firsts”, and if you would
like to know more about any of them in particular, simply click on the
leaflet image at the beginning of each section…
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1959
The
curse of being first…
First to use a computer to process day to day banking transactions
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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Being first to do something does have its
drawbacks. Martins themselves would
surely have acknowledged that having been first to use a computer soon left
them lagging behind, as the other banks also explored possibilities and
faster, more capable computers and equipment became available. This problem
affects many banks well into the 1990s - fitting out an entire branch
network with computer equipment that very quickly goes out of date, is
hugely expensive – consequently the shabby looking computer terminals you
might have seen in YOUR bank look like that because they are being used way
beyond their expected shelf life.
Repair companies make a fortune by trying to keep these systems
running, and despite advances in computer software, programs still need to
be written in a way that the older equipment can still understand.
 How Martins actually achieves a first with computers is a fascinating
story, and we are grateful to our colleague Peter Hayes who actually worked
on Pegasus, the computer shown above – for telling us about it. Martins
Bank’s tradition of being first with things is spoiled on home territory,
when another bank dares to open the country’s first drive-in branch in
Liverpool itself.
Those in charge at Martins are beside themselves
with rage, and determined not only to open a better one, but to immediately
be first in banking to introduce something else – in fact ANYTHING else, it
doesn’t really matter what. A board
meeting is held and someone suggests computers – the fight back begins, and
results in the arrival of Pegasus.
The winged horse is, however, not it all it is cracked up to be, and
you can read more about this, and Peter Hayes’ involvement with the
computer on our Pegasus II page.
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1967
Racing
to be first:
The World’s first cash machine to
Use a plastic card and PIN…
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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Barclays and Martins are neck and neck in the
race to bring us the world’s first cash machine. That the race is won by
Barclays, five months ahead of its rival is still seen as no setback at all
by Martins, who proudly promote their
machine as the first cash machine in the North of England. There is,
however an even bigger claim to fame here - the Barclays machine is at
first operated by special cheques dotted with holes which have to be
matched onto pins inside a drawer.
Martins is first to use a plastic card and a personal identification
number together.
 Despite the two banks using different manufacturers, the workings of
the two machines are surprisingly similar.
The customer is issued with a stock of special chemical cheques or
plastic cards and a code number.
Used together, these will unlock a drawer
providing access to a small pack containing ten one-pound notes. Perhaps a clumsy system compared to what
we have today, but nevertheless it was ground-breaking for the time it was
introduced.
We will have to wait at least another twenty
years for anything that will resemble a more electronic system, from any of
the banks… Barclays’ later attempts produce a credible ATM that is a cross
between a one-armed bandit and a cash machine, where customers’
instructions appear behind a window courtesy of a large roller that spins
backwards or forwards to the relevant passage of text. Sometimes the roller gets stuck or only
reveals part of the instructions through the window. Happy days!
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1959
First with innovation
The first drive-in bank?
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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This is one of Martins’ most successful (and
certainly most well publicised) firsts. It is also one that really hasn’t
been seen much since. It’s amazing
what rivalry can achieve – one of the Bank’s competitors dares to open a
drive-in branch in Liverpool (what cheek!) and Martins retaliates by
becoming the first Bank to use a computer to process daily work. It also
opens a lavish drive-in Bank in Leicester, AND engages the services of the
Minister for Transport himself to open it!
There is no doubt, that by these actions, and as the leader of the
“small six” Banks, Martins wants its customers and its competitors to take
it seriously.
 It is a shame that this original drive-in bank did not fully catch
on, despite lasting until the late 1980s. Banks still experimented with the
idea, but with payment methods developing at a more rapid pace, the cash
machine put paid to ideas of any large-scale development of drive-ins.
In the high-tech gadget filled twenty-first
century, despite our willingness to queue in our cars for ages at any
number of cardboard fast-food outlets, we don’t seem to need the novelty
and excitement that captured first Leicester, and later Epsom – using a
large, purpose-built Drive-In Bank.
Certainly much more than an experiment, banking with Martins by car
is a popular thing to do over the ten-year period 1959-1969, and thanks to
Barclays, it survives until the late 1980s…
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1959
Unwaith eto,
diolch yn fawr?
First bank in the UK to issue English/Welsh bilingual stationery…
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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 With branches in both North and South Wales, Martins
takes an active interest in the culture of Wales, and takes seriously the
matter of employing managers and staff who can speak both Welsh and
English. This poster from 1960 shows
the Bank’s involvement in the annual Eisteddfod, and in 1965, Cardiff
Branch seizes the initiative and produces the Uk’s first bilingual cheques…
  Through
Cardiff Branch, the Bank has achieved another FIRST with the issue of the
first bilingual cheques in Britain. The cheques, each printed in both
English and Welsh, are drawn on an account opened by the Urdd movement for
the Urdd National Eisteddfod, being held this year in Cardiff. The Movement is a youth organisation,
founded in 1922 to foster, among other things, an interest in Wales and its
culture, and the Urdd National Eisteddfod is to the young people of Wales,
what the National Eisteddfod is to the adults. Among the Movement’s patrons is the Lord
Lieutenant of Glamorgan, Sir Cennydd Traherne, T.D., of
our South Western Board.
 
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1960
First service…
First to operate a sub branch on Centre Court at Wimbledon…
YOU CAN READ MORE HERE:
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 Martins Bank’s Branches can not only be found in
practically every town, but also in a number of RAF stations, a hospital,
the British Wool Marketing Board, the NORGAS Building, an abattoir,
universities and numerous cattle markets.
Taking banking to the workplace
is a popular move, and leads to the building of a permanent branch at the
Great Yorkshire Show Ground. Around the country, Martins serves the workers
at Aylesford Paper Mills near Maidstone, and at many other locations
including, industrial estates, a colliery, a corn exchange, ICI Wilton
Works, and a couple of railway stations. Notwithstanding that, there is
even a branch at the British Wool Marketing Board site at Kew Bridge!
 Martins Bank also enjoys many prime sites in
well to do parts of London. None, however, is a more prestigious, or
perhaps strange choice for a branch location than the Centre Court at
Wimbledon – a top prize indeed for any bank. That top prize comes Barclays’
way in 1969, and they waste no time in associating themselves (through
advertising) with the sub branch at least a year before it actually becomes
a branch of Barclays. Banking on Centre Court continues for several years
more, including in that time from a competitor bank that has managed to
open its own sub branch there.
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1960s
First
to make a splash…
Leading an advertising revolution?
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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 Martins Bank is quick to recognise – and
take seriously – the potential savings and borrowing powers of young
people. Until the advent of the 1960s teenager with
surplus cash to spend, Martins’ advertising is distinctly – yet beautifully
– plain. In keeping with the Bank’s
tradition of commissioning fine artists, the copy from the 1940s and 1950s
consists almost exclusively of grey images, usually sketch drawings of
British towns, cities and landmarks.
The idea, is that people will associate the Bank
with the fine traditions of the places where it trades, and is also a
throwback to the times of the many small local banks that eventually came
together to form Martins itself.
Martins realises that young people, particularly those in work, but
importantly those in further and higher education have, or will soon have,
power over their own money, and the ability to save and borrow responsibly.
Almost overnight, the Harold Wilson generation causes a major rethink of
the Bank’s advertising policy, and with it, another first – stylish ads,
evocative of the moment, each with a clear message – the CUSTOMER is king, in control of his or her own finances,
and there is no better bank than Martins to help them achieve what they
wanted in life. Sheer genius.
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1918
to 1969
Bucking
the trend…
Operating a full national network of branches from a Head Office OUTSIDE London
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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 The amalgamation in 1928 of the Bank of Liverpool and Martins with
the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank sparks the exponential growth of the new
Martins Bank – a bank that is proud to be based in Liverpool, NOT London.
Opulence, decadence, and a strong defiance of a
financial system that automatically assumes “London-centric” is the only
option for a financial institution, Martins has these qualities in
abundance, and demonstrates them to the full in the construction of what is
still  one of the most lavish and ostentatious bank buildings ever seen in
this country.
To top it all, Martins’ wonderful and
breath-taking Head Office at 4 Water Street Liverpool, couldn’t be further
away from London, the traditional centre of British Banking.
Although Martins Bank does also operate from
splendid and large premises at 68 Lombard Street London, they are only ever
referred to as London Office, and nothing more. It is therefore a particularly sad
moment, when Martins Bank merges with Barclays whose head office is in
London and Martins’ home city of Liverpool becomes just another outpost of
a larger and more sprawling enterprise with more than 5000 offices around
the world…
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1948
The
Bank on Wheels…
… launches an entire FLEET
of
mobile branches!
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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 Now here’s an idea that’s gone round the block a few times and come
around again: - taking the bank to the customer – “another way” to bank –
“now there’s a thought…” Today’s mobile banks, converted from those
smaller town and city buses, bear little resemblance to their 1948
counterparts, but still fulfil more or less the same role. Today however,
there is also the sheer cheek of expecting customer loyalty from those
whose permanent branch you took away in the first place!
 Today’s modern vehicles seem to lack the charm of the originals,
which in Martins’ day have to be towed by land rovers, and evoke the
nostalgic suggestion of a weekend’s caravanning in Snowdonia. At the height of what Martins refers to
as “Show Season”, a fleet of six mobile caravans tours England Wales
Scotland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, attending every kind of
agricultural, sporting and industrial show. A complicated arrangement of
preferred hotels and flower shops means that Martins Bank often wins awards
for the presentation of its mobile caravans at the eighty or shows they
attend each year. There are times
when a mobile branch is not appropriate, so a trade stand is used instead. The mobile caravans are also used to
bring banking to local housing estates, and in the late 1960s a
prefabricated branch is used to attract customers in areas where a new
branch of the Bank is currently being constructed.
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1968
First
to feel the crunch?
YOU CAN READ MORE
HERE:
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There have been a number of theories as to why
Martins Bank, at the height of its success, merges with Barclays, not least
that the Bank of England is made nervous the rapid expansion of Martins
Bank and by its lavish spending on new branches and services.
It could well be, that Martins’ very success,
has itself become a heavy weight around the Bank’s neck: Servicing the lending requirements of
such major customers as a pools company, an airline and a world-renowned shipping
line, often sends Martins to other banks to borrow money – a
compelling argument, perhaps, for a merger?
By 2024, Barclays has reduced its network of
branches from a once record figure of around 5000, to just 200. Of the 730 or so branches of Martins Bank
taken on by Barclays at the time of the merger in 1969, just 8 remain at
the end of 2024.
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