High street banking giant Lloyds fears the word “widow” may “trigger unwarranted personal memories of trauma and upsetting situations”
Lloyds Bank has asked its staff to stop saying “widow” because it might upset some customers.
Even though they own a company called Scottish Widows, the bank thinks this word could “trigger unwarranted personal memories of trauma and upsetting situations”. It suggests using the term “separated” instead.
Mark Brown from the workers’ union wasn’t happy about this. He said: “The more we allow people to claim they have been offended because they disagree with the use of certain words or phrases, the more they will seize the opportunity to be offended.”
He also said that Lloyds is just pretending to be good by doing this. “Lloyds is engaged in the most hypocritical form of virtue signalling.” He added: “If it really believed in the use of inclusive language, then it would change the Scottish Widows brand name immediately.”
But a person speaking for Lloyds said: “The voluntary inclusivity tool is designed to be a self-moderated way for colleagues to explore how people may feel about different words and phrases. As is par for the course when crowd-sourcing for ideas, some are better than others.”
Scottish Widows, a company that was established in 1815 to support women and children who lost their male family members in the Napoleonic Wars, is still going strong after more than 200 years. Today, they serve over 6 million customers all over the UK.
They offer a variety of products including life cover, critical illness, income protection, workplace and individual pensions, annuities as well as savings and investment products. Customers can get these products and services through Independent Financial Advisers, directly, or at any Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and Halifax branches.
