Lloyds has now confirmed that staff will get their full redundancy terms following our Newsletter last week reporting that it had opened voluntary severance registers in several Divisions with staff given a leaving date of Q1 2027.
As members will be aware from previous Newsletters the heritage Lloyds TSB redundancy terms were always contractual; Lloyds has confirmed its acceptance of what we knew the legal position to be.
To recap, in its announcement, Lloyds said:
“As we head towards the end of the year, it feels like a timely opportunity to understand how people are feeling about their futures and their careers with the Group. To help us with that, today we’re just starting an exercise to see whether people are interested in leaving the Group through voluntary redundancy.
Whilst we want to provide more choice, we won’t be able to agree every request. We need to balance individual preferences with the needs of the business, including the skills, capabilities and capacity we need now and in the future”.
Many members have asked whether similar voluntary severance registers will be opened in other areas? We think they will be. When that will be, is difficult to say but Lloyds knows that it’s going to be making thousands of redundancies over the next few years. In his recent Financial Times interview, Charlie Nunn, CEO of Lloyds, refused to even discuss job reductions because of AI. That tells you all you need to know about what’s coming down the line. If Lloyds can achieve reductions by voluntary means, with staff getting their full, contractual redundancy terms, then that’s a step in the right direction.
Our one obvious concern is what happens to those staff whose applications for voluntary redundancy are turned down? How will those members of staff be viewed by the business? Lloyds needs to make a commitment it won’t use the fact that staff have applied for voluntary severance to then manage them out of the business on trumped up performance plans. We will be watching this issue very carefully over the next few months.
Early Retirement Calculations
On the back off receiving voluntary redundancy there will be some members who want to apply for early retirement.
Members will be aware that early retirement quotes have changed significantly but Willis Towers Watson (WTW) refuses to tell staff how it calculates the figures.
That’s an unacceptable situation.
In August 2025, the Trustee and WTW changed the methodology for calculating early retirement pensions for members of the Lloyds No 1 and No 2 Pension Schemes. In an email to members, WTW said:
“Because the new basis is member specific, individual members may be better or worse off compared to the old basis depending on a number of factors”. The factors referred to included: age, how long ago the member left the Scheme, the proportion of their benefit that is GMP.
New early retirement factors were introduced for HBOS Pension Scheme members from August 2026.
However, WTW is still refusing to provide members with the exact basis of the calculations. It seems that the early retirement factors are just one part of the calculation. Members must accept the figures on trust. In our last Newsletter we reported that several members who questioned why their ‘new’ figures differed from the ones they’d been given before had the original figures reinstated. That’s not right and doesn’t instill a lot of confidence.
Whilst it’s true that scheme members don’t have an absolute right to take their pensions early, many thousands do every year. Equally, the Trustee is legally required to pay members the benefits to which they are entitled. However, members have the right to know how their pension and lump sums have been calculated.
Why are WTW and Trustee determined the keep the calculations secret? It feels like something is not quite right.
WTW can’t be trusted to calculate pension and commutation lump sums without explaining its calculations.
We have been supporting a member whose dispute with the Trustee over her figures was turned down. With our support she appealed to the Pensions Ombudsman who recently ordered the Trustee to provide the underlying actuarial advice and certification used to justify the August 2025 calculation overhaul. That’s good news.
We will be writing to members to get them to write to the Trustee asking why the calculations are confidential and asking for complete transparency.
Those letters will go out in next few weeks.
We will be returning to this issue again in our next Newsletter. In the meantime, members with any questions can contact the Union’s Bedford Office on 01234 262868 (Choose Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR COLLEAGUES IN HALIFAX & LLOYDS SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS BANKING GROUP.