Lloyds make compensation offers after missing deadline

After missing its self-imposed deadline of June 30, Lloyds said Friday it was close to making offers of compensation to less than half of the customers who had been impacted by counts of fraud by former bankers.

Lloyds have received significant criticism regarding the amount of time it has taken to offer restitution to the victims of the fraud.

Lyndon Scourfield, 54, a senior director of HBOS in Reading, England was one of two former bankers jailed in February which siphoned money from struggling businesses. The scam, which forced firms to borrow cash through a consultancy firm operated by associate David Mills cost small firms as much as £1bn, according to police sources.

Victims have accused Lloyds of dragging out the compensation process for the crimes committed between 2003 and 2007, as well as grossly underestimating the amount of the final pay-out from its £100m compensation pool.

Of the 67 customers affected, only 5 customers have accepted the final offer and Adrian White, chief operating officer for commercial banking has said that the bank is “continuing to make progress in getting offers to victims of the HBOS Reading fraud”