Yet thanks to demutualisation in 1989, and its acquisition by Spanish financial-services heavyweight Banco Santander in 2004, the top marketing role at Abbey is now a very different proposition.
Director of brand and communications, Keith Moor, can lay his hands on bulging budgets, an ever-growing list of brands and the glamorous multimillion-pound sponsorship of F1 Champion Lewis Hamilton.
'This is the entrance we use when Lewis arrives, to avoid the photographers,' beams the affable Moor, pointing toward a rear door at the bank's Euston headquarters.
The Liverpool-born marketer, who will celebrate his 40th in the coming days, breezes into the interview showing no sign of strain despite his ever-complicating job remit. When Moor took over from his former boss Jeremy Davies in July last year, the banking landscape looked much as it had done in 1995, when he first joined Abbey. By the end of 2008, the marketer was faced with the headache of one global economic downturn and two floundering brands - Alliance & Leicester (A&L) and Bradford & Bingley (B&B).
Moor shrugs off the increasing workload, but admits the changing market conditions have forced him to tear up the rule book. 'We're entering recession, which has much more impact on my job than taking on two new businesses. Of course it's important we integrate A&L and B&B into the Santander group, but what is more important is how we respond to changing customer needs,' he says.
Moor shifts uncomfortably when recounting the emergency that led to Santander buying up B&B's branch network and savings business, leaving the Treasury to cope with its failed mortgage book.
The rescue could not have come at a worse time for Moor, with B&B still four days from the end of an ad push assuring customers that they could 'Sleep easy'. Even 36 hours of frantic work to insert the Santander branding could not prevent national newspaper articles sneering at the folly of such a campaign.
'It was a difficult situation,' admits Moor. 'We changed the ad in a day-and-a-half and put some messages in about the ownership change. It was the last week of the campaign, but it showed staff and customers we were serious about turning the business around. I don't think anybody would advocate losing media money.'
The question 'why bother?' springs to mind. Surely B&B, and to a lesser extent A&L, is a dead parochial brand, meaning-less in the contemporary global financial environment? So why not just replace the media spaces with an Abbey ad?
'The business to a certain extent failed and needed a white knight; aspects such as trust of that brand have experienced a drop-off. But B&B still is a well-respected and loved brand,' Moor argues.
Many in the banking industry expect Santander to eventually sweep aside its three UK high-street brands and adopt a mono-brand strategy. Moor certainly does nothing to deny this is the ultimate ambition of his Spanish taskmasters. Cross-fertilsation has already started: from 5 January Abbey rolled out its mortgage products across 30 B&B branches as a pilot to see how customers responded.
'We've spent a number of years raising awareness of Santander as it brings with it global values. The message we're getting from consumers is they want to know more about the Santander brand, so we'll continue to tell them more,' he says.
However, Moor insists that a full rebrand of its branch network is not yet on the agenda. 'We have to be careful - you don't want to alienate the customers and make them feel unwelcome,' he says. 'We are taking them on a very gradual journey. The point of introducing a bit more red, and a bit more imagery to do with the Santander brand, is that it has to deliver extra value to A&L and B&B. So we'll be using the Santander red more in the marketing and promotional space, rather than branding.'
It would also be difficult to ring the changes immediately, given the complex back-office set-up. B&B's operation, based in Bingley, now feeds into Abbey's Milton Keynes HQ, but integration with A&L has been rather more problematic. Santander has offered hundreds of A&L staff voluntary redundancy, and once that process is complete, a more coherent structure should emerge. For the time being Moor is delegating the day-to-day running of the A&L brand to head of brand communications, Lesley Vernon.
Nonetheless, changes to the company's marketing arrangements have already started. Late last year Moor consolidated the combined £38m Abbey, A&L and B&B media planning and buying accounts into Carat, following a pitch against Universal McCann and Starcom.
It remains unclear whether a similar consolidation will follow for the above-the-line accounts. Abbey uses WCRS, A&L continues to work with Leicester agency Big for its press ads, while the small amount of ad activity at B&B is created in-house. Although Moor adds that there is 'a lot to be said' for pooling media spend, the varying demands of the brands' ad activity makes it a less obvious decision for above-the-line work
'We might [consolidate the full account into WCRS] but it depends on the efficiency,' he says. 'A&L has a good template for direct response ads, and it probably doesn't need a large creative agency to do that. But we wouldn't rule anything out. Santander's primary strategic relationship in the UK is with WCRS and that will continue to be the case.'
Yet Moor is undoubtedly on the look-out for cost-saving initiatives. On top of the media consolidation, he has brought Abbey's direct marketing account in-house and terminated the brand's relationship with incumbent agency Tequila.
Another big decision is whether to renew Santander's sponsorship of the F1 British Grand Prix, which enters its final year in 2009. Moor says that Hamilton will remain at the heart of the bank's UK marketing strategy in 2009. 'For us, sponsorship delivers a huge amount of value. It also has impact internally, and will help make the A&L and B&B staff feel part of Santander.'
Of course, there is the bonus of regular trips to F1 Grand Prix, where Moor gets to mix with the great and the good. How many marketers at the old, unfashionable Abbey National could have boasted that?