Lloyds has lost £10bn from its staff pension pot

Lloyds’ pension scheme may have lost £10billion in value in September’s meltdown – leading to the bank being asked to reveal more details about the state of the fund.

The pension scheme, one of the largest in the UK, has been forced to sell “a large part of its equity holdings” to meet urgent cash demands after former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget.

Details of Lloyds’ bailout – linked to the use of liability-driven investing – were revealed to MPs in remarkable evidence by Henry Tapper, a pensions expert who is also a partner with Stella Eastwood, head of group pensions at Lloyds.

Meltdown: Pensions expert John Ralfe said Lloyds should issue a formal statement to reassure members of the scheme

Without naming them, Tapper told MPs he lives with “the CEO of a large DB plan (defined benefit plan) who has had to liquidate a large portion of his holdings.”

He added that “the size of the collateral call was in the billions of dollars.”

BTU union leader Mark Brown has now written to trustees of the Lloyds pension plan urging “a thorough investigation” in Eastwood.

Staff are “routinely disciplined for much less,” Brown said, adding the leak was “a clear breach of confidentiality.”

Pensions expert John Ralfe said Lloyds should issue a formal statement to reassure members of the scheme. Lloyds said the sell-off had “no material impact” on the program’s funding position. But analysts say Lloyds’ £52bn scheme, which has 345,000 members, could have lost a fifth of its assets.

The bank declined to comment on Eastwood’s position and said it would provide an update to the plan in February.