The lender’s senior bankers will now be able to earn payouts of up to 10 times their base salary, up from a two-to-one ratio previously imposed by the European Union back in 2014 when the UK was a member.
“The revised bonus cap will not alter the way Barclays sets its incentive pool, which is based on overall Group performance,” a spokesperson for the bank, who confirmed the contents of the memo, said.
“It will allow us greater flexibility to differentiate individual bonuses within a small and defined group of colleagues,” he added.
Banks including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have already made similar moves to their variable compensation structures for their top UK-based bankers. Barclays shareholders voted in favour of a proposal by the bank to remove the cap at its shareholder meeting this year. The EU originally set the restrictions on pay in an effort to curb excess risk-taking at banks following the 2008 financial crisis. Britain’s financial regulators last October said they would remove the bonus cap, in a bid to increase the competitiveness of the country’s financial sector. (Reporting By Lawrence White, editing by Sinead Cruise)