The High Court of Justice has granted a Court Order approving the transfer of Alliance & Leicester’s business to Santander.

Under the terms of the Court Order the transfer will become effective at 00.01 hours on 28 May 2010.

Customers will have access to Santander’s full product range plus use of over 1,300 Santander branches in the UK, four times as many branches as currently available for A&L customers.

A&L currently holds a separate banking licence to Santander. If customers hold deposits with both banks they are covered under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme for both A&L and Santander savings. This means they could currently claim a maximum of up to £100,000 under the FSCS (or £200,000 in the case of joint accounts) as they can claim up to £50,000 against each organisation.

From 28 May 2010, all deposits will fall under Santander, and therefore the cover available from FSCS will reduce to £50,000 (or £100,000 in the case of joint accounts).

Of our 14 million savings customers, around 10,000 have been identified that could be impacted by the removal of the licence. These are customers that hold more than £50,000 between the two banks.

Santander says it has written to these customers to explain the consequences of the change and offered them options to move money if they wish to, including waiving fees and exit penalties for amounts above £50,000.