Northern Rock bank has been sold to Virgin Money and the deal is to be completed on 1 January, 2012. What does it mean for you, if you have a Northern Rock personal loan, credit card or mortgage?

First of all, if you are a Northern Rock customer, there is no need to change anything in the way you were banking. According to the agreement with Virgin Money, all current terms and conditions of loans, mortgages and credit cards will remain absolutely the same. Savings accounts and mortgages will be automatically transferred to Virgin.

Virgin intends to keep all the existing 75 Northern Rock Branches and is expected to open a number of new ones, although it will most probably rebrand them under its own name in the future.

A word of warning though – credit card and mortgage rates are guaranteed by Virgin for now, but there is no certainty that variable mortgage rates and credit card APR will not be increased in the future.

On the other hand, Virgin Money has been looking for a possibility to enter this segment of financial market for a long time and we might have reasonable hopes that a new provider will mean more competition and better interest rates.

And what do you think? Will you be running to transfer your savings accounts and try to remortgage now? Or later? Or prefer to leave everything in the hands of Virgin Money and not to worry about it at all?