Lloyds Bank has told staff to stop using word “widow” despite it owning Scottish Widows. The high street banking giant fears the word may “trigger unwarranted personal memories of trauma and upsetting situations”, it has been reported.
Mark Brown, of the staff trade union, 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.
“Lloyds is engaged in the most hypocritical form of virtue signalling.” The spokesperson went on to say: “If it really believed in the use of inclusive language, then it would change the Scottish Widows brand name immediately.
READ MORE Kate Middleton spotted at favourite farm shop looking ‘happy and healthy’
“The fact that’s not going to happen tells you all you need to know about ‘inclusive language’ in Lloyds Banking Group.” And the trade union chief went on and said in a scathing statement: “It’s a gimmick – Lloyds has become a woke laughing stock.”
A Lloyds spokesman 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 was set up in 1815 to take care of women and children who lost their fathers, brothers and husbands in the Napoleonic Wars, taking its name after the people it was founded to look after. Now more than 200 years on, they look after over 6 million customers across the UK.
cottish Widows’ product range includes life cover, critical illness, income protection, workplace and individual pensions, annuities as well as savings and investment products. Customers can access Scottish Widows’ products and services through Independent Financial Advisers, directly, and through all Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and Halifax branches.
