BANK OF Ireland plans to appoint the former insurance director at UK bank Lloyds, Archie Kane, as its next chairman, replacing Pat Molloy when he retires next month after three years in the role, it has been reported.

Mr Kane, who left partly state-owned Lloyds last year, has been nominated by Bank of Ireland’s board and is awaiting approval from the Central Bank, according to the news wire Bloomberg.

Bank of Ireland had no comment to make on the report.

Mr Kane, a former chairman of the Association of British Insurers, was Lloyds’ director in charge of the bank’s insurance business Scottish Widows and the board’s representative for the bank’s Scottish operations. He left the bank in May 2011 after a boardroom reshuffle by António Horta-Osório in his first week as Lloyds chief executive.

Mr Kane was paid £721,000 (€890,000) for his five months’ work at Lloyds in 2011 and paid £1.4 million for 2010. He will be paid substantially less at Bank of Ireland, albeit for a non-executive role as chairman of the only Irish bank to avoid Government control.

Mr Molloy was paid annual fees of €394,000 as chairman, a role the bank calls “governor”.

Mr Kane was one of a number of former executives of Lloyds who missed out on £2 million in bonuses due to be paid for the successful integration of HBOS when they were blocked by the bank.

He joined Lloyds in 1986 and was appointed to its board in 2000, before becoming executive director in charge of insurance and investments three years later.

Mr Molloy was chief executive of Bank of Ireland from 1991 to 1998 and later a non-executive of the bank from 1998 to 2001.

He returned to take over from chairman Richard Burrows in 2009 after the banking crisis and was in charge of the bank’s board when it raised €12 billion in two recapitalisation efforts.

The State injected €4.2 billion into the bank but it avoided Government control when a 35 per cent stake was sold to a group of investors last year.