UK regulators will speed up bonus payouts for high-earning bankers, watering down another important change introduced after the 2008 financial crisis.
Since 2015 senior bankers have had to wait eight years before receiving their full bonuses to ensure individuals could be held financially accountable for any wrongdoing that came to light years later, or even after they left the bank.
On Wednesday, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said they were halving that to four years.
The watchdogs also went further than a previous consultation, saying they would now require a much smaller proportion of bonuses to be withheld from high-earning staff over the period. From Thursday, only 60% of the payout that falls above £660,000 will have to be deferred.
The decision, which will be welcomed by the City, marks yet another rollback of post-financial crisis rules after the UK formally scrapped a banker bonus cap two years ago that limited bonuses to two times bankers’ salaries.
The FCA and the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority, which have argued that the reduced deferral periods still provide enough time for any problems to surface, said the change would bring the UK “more closely in line with many other major jurisdictions”. In the EU, bankers’ bonuses are typically deferred for three to five years, while the US has no such restrictions.
The PRA’s chief executive, Sam Woods, said: “These new rules will cut red tape without encouraging the reckless pay structures that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. These changes are the latest example of our commitment to boosting UK competitiveness.”
Deferred bonus rules have been used to punish high-profile cases of wrongdoing in the City. Barclays froze and later cancelled £18m worth of pay and bonuses for its former chief executive Jes Staley, who resigned in 2021 after the FCA launched an investigation into his links to Jeffrey Epstein. Staley was later found to have misled the watchdog over his relationship to the former financier and sex offender.
Efforts to relax bonus rules are part of a wider drive to cut red tape across the City, with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, having claimed in her Mansion House speech in July that regulations were acting like as a “boot on the neck” of businesses and risked “choking off” innovation.
She has put pressure on watchdogs, including the Bank and FCA, to further loosen rules in hopes of boosting economic growth.
