Lloyds boss gets nearly £2m pay rise amid profit slump and branch closures

The boss of Lloyds got a nearly £2 million pay bump last year, despite profit falling, high street branches closing and having to set aside £1.2 billion to cover potential costs from the motor finance saga.

Charlie Nunn took home £5.6 million in 2024, up from £3.7 million the previous year, boosted by long-term bonuses related to Lloyds’s share price rising.

The pay rise comes as Lloyds’s profit slumped by a fifth last year to £6 billion, below analysts’ expectations.

Nonetheless, shares soared when it revealed its annual results earlier in February, after the bank said it had cut costs and was handing out more cash to investors.

It said it was saving money by automating more of its services, as well as closing branches and a number of its head offices.

The group is planning to shut 136 more high street branches over the next year, and also has plans to close offices in Dunfermline and in Liverpool.

Mr Nunn’s pay was made up of just under £2.5 million in base salary, while his annual bonus fell to £1.1 million from £1.3 million the previous year.

But the chief executive received the first instalment of a share-related bonus, worth £2 million.

It was the first time the three-year, so-called long-term incentive payment had been in place, after Nr Nunn joined Lloyds in 2021.

The increasing pay packet also came as the bank was forced to set aside another £700 million to cover potential compensation costs for motor finance commission arrangements, adding to the £450 million already confirmed last year.

So-called hidden commission arrangements between car dealers and borrowers are the subject of a major review by the UK’s financial watchdog, as well as landmark court cases.

The banking group is exposed to the market through its brand Black Horse, which is one of the biggest car finance providers in the UK.

Separately, Lloyds is one of several banks to have suffered a major outage on its digital services of late, an issue that has sparked fresh interest from MPs over the scale of recent IT failures.

Earlier in February, the Treasury Committee said it had written to the bosses of nine banks including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Nationwide to outline how much time services have been unavailable in the past two years, and the number of customers affected.

Lloyds was approached for comment.