Yorkshire Building Society’s £2.5m ‘golden hello’ to new chief executive is unacceptable - Letters

Your editorial regarding the rigour of the Financial Conduct Authority over the Philips Trust issue (The Yorkshire Post, March 26) highlights what appears to be the excess originally in the banking sector now transferring to the mutual sector.

This morning I received the annual review of the Yorkshire Building Society. The YBS has a new chief executive. Their basic salary is £785,000 pa. On top of this is a bonus of £777,000 and a golden hello of £2.5million. How can this be right? A mutual giving £2.5m as a golden hello.

I would urge members like myself to vote against the remuneration report and the remuneration policy.

The strap line of the society is 'What matters to you, matters to us.' Perhaps the FCA should also look at such extravagance. This behaviour cannot be allowed to continue.

In response to this letter, a spokesperson for YBS said: “In setting executive pay, the Remuneration Committee looks at a number of factors including the Society’s position against the market, as it is important that we are able to attract and retain the right talent in a competitive marketplace. Our member approved Remuneration Policy is structured to support the delivery of our strategy, recognising the Society’s performance and the value delivered for our members and customers.

“This year’s figures include a one-off payment to cover lost earnings related to Susan’s move from Barclays – this is common practice for executive pay in financial services.

“The Society attracted a record number of new savings accounts in 2023, delivered growth in both savings and mortgage balances and continued to increase our customer satisfaction scores. We are particularly proud our savers benefitted from interest rates 41 per cent higher than the market average, equating to an additional £441.1m in interest paid – more than double the previous year.”

From: Jim Buckley, Ackton.

Perhaps the greatest problem of our society is regulation. We think we are highly regulated, because we are constantly told so. In fact this regulation is set up as to be largely ineffectual. This leads to understandable outrage when we find out; for example your leader (The Yorkshire Post, March 26) on the financial scandal involving building societies.

This is yet another failure of regulation; as if we needed any more to tell us the problem. You speak of the corridors of power not listening. We obviously do not make enough noise. What needs to happen in our society to get people to take an interest in what is going on? We have scandal after scandal, yet do nothing about it.