Lloyds expects to pay bonuses this year

Good news for Lloyds' beleaguered Scottish workforce - bonuses are on the cards this year.

Despite the lack of hard figures in today's interim management statement from Lloyds Banking Group (the "good" revenues spoken about actually means it will meet market expectations, according to an analyst note on FT Alphaville), chief executive Eric Daniels still suggested that staff are likely to receive an annual bonus this year.

Before the Daily Mail starts frothing at the mouth and Vince Cable gears up for another speech, it's worth pointing out that Daniels was keen to distance Lloyds from the sort of payouts handed to City-based investment bankers and said that average bonuses at Lloyds amount to a mere 1k.

These would be for rank and file staff working in retail branches, call centres and operations roles, he added in today's conference call, and reflect strong results that "we would hope to share with our 100,000 employees".

Still, financial services recruiters in Scotland remain sceptical about whether this will convince Lloyds' staff to stick around.

"Bonuses at this level are usually considered a nice to have, rather than an essential part of remuneration, so there's not the sort of post-bonus movement you would see in London here," says one. "Most Lloyds staff we speak to are still concerned about job security, so if the opportunity to move came now, I've no doubt they would take it."

More redundancies still seem like an inevitability at Lloyds, albeit less severe than those to date. The bank is on course to achieve 1.3bn in "synergies and other operating efficiencies" by the end of the year, and will increase that to 2bn by the end of 2011.