Lloyds paid 20 of staff £1m or more last year

The figure, which will be disclosed in the taxpayer-backed lender’s annual report, means there were around 770 bankers in this pay bracket at the five big high street firms last year, the Sunday Times said.

Lloyds is predominately a retail bank with most of its million-pound bankers working in its small wholesale banking division, which has to compete for staff with big international investment banks.

Chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio was paid £2.5m last year and is due to have details of a new long-term bonus scheme disclosed in the report.

Barclays has already revealed that it paid 428 staff more than £1m last year, while there were 95 at Royal Bank of Scotland, 204 at HSBC and 19 at Santander.

Lloyds remained in the red last year with £570m of losses in 2012 after taking more mammoth provisions relating to mis-sold payment protection insurance.

Staff shared a £365m total bonus pot but one of the conditions for Mr Horta-Osorio’s payout is that the Government must have
sold at least a third of its
stake above 61p – the average price at which shares were bought during the bank’s bailout in 
2008.