Lloyds hires Elderfield as compliance director

Lloyds Banking Group has hired Central Bank deputy governor Matthew Elderfield as its director for conduct and compliance.

Mr Elderfield (47), will start the job in October, Lloyds said in a statement today. He will be responsible for developing the London-based lender’s conduct strategy and overseeing all compliance and conduct activities, it said.

“After a very rewarding experience in Ireland in challenging circumstances, I look forward to applying my regulatory experience to this new opportunity,” Mr Elderfield said in the statement.

"This is an important time of change in the UK financial services industry, with the formation" of the Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority.

Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan hired Mr Elderfield, a British citizen, in 2010 to help oversee the reconstruction of the country's banking system after the real estate bubble burst.

He had served as chief executive officer of the Bermuda Monetary Authority between 2007 and 2009 and spent eight years at the UK's Financial Services Authority.

Lloyds has accumulated £12.1 billion of loan losses in Ireland since its 2008 takeover of HBOS, whose precursor Bank of Scotland entered the Irish mortgage market in 1999.

Lloyds injected about €8 billion of capital into the Irish unit between 2008 and 2010, when it let its local banking license lapse and subsumed the loans into the London-based parent.

Mr Elderfield, who received a €340,000 annual salary at the central bank in Dublin, led two rounds of stress tests of Ireland’s domestic lenders, requiring taxpayers to commit as much as €64 billion of capital to banks.

On his watch, the state took over five of the six biggest lenders, which are still wrestling with the legacy of the crisis.

Bloomberg