London, March 18, 2026, 14:50 GMT
Lloyds Banking Group held near the flatline at 96.19 pence as of 1449 GMT on Wednesday, trailing both Barclays and NatWest. Investors were sizing up renewed parliamentary attention on Lloyds’ customer-data issue, while broader UK financials looked stronger. Barclays picked up 0.94%, with NatWest ahead 0.65%.
Banks actually showed some muscle in London earlier on, climbing 1.9% by 1044 GMT as oil cooled off and investors kept an eye on the Fed and the Bank of England. Lloyds, though, barely budged.
On Tuesday, the Treasury Committee pressed Chief Executive Charlie Nunn for answers about the March 12 app outage, wanting details on which information was exposed and possible compensation for affected customers. Lloyds responded that account security remained intact, with no action required from customers. The bank, however, still hasn’t said how many users were hit by the glitch.
Awkward timing here. That same committee reported last year that between January 2023 and February 2025, nine major UK banks and building societies racked up at least 803 hours of unexpected outages—a new high. Digital resilience is now a front-burner issue, with banks steering even more customers online.
Even so, management hasn’t dropped its pitch. At Morgan Stanley’s European Financials Conference on Tuesday, Nunn told the audience that Lloyds sees “significant value in the stock” and flagged ongoing buybacks as a key way to hand excess capital back to shareholders. Lloyds Banking Group
Nunn said the structural hedge—a mix of longer-term fixed-rate assets and swaps that helps smooth out earnings as interest rates shift—is on track to contribute £1.5 billion in net revenue this year, with over £1 billion expected for next year. He stuck to the earlier target for return on tangible equity, aiming for above 16% by 2026, a metric banks use to gauge profit on shareholder capital.
Alvaro Serrano at Morgan Stanley, steering the discussion, put his return on tangible equity estimates in the “16% to 18%” range for the medium term. Lloyds plans to outline its next strategic steps in July. Lloyds Banking Group
The market’s been chewing over that long-term argument since January. Back then, Lloyds unveiled a 2025 pretax profit of 6.7 billion pounds—up 12%—raised its 2026 profitability target, and kicked off a 1.75 billion pound buyback. Reuters reported at the time that the UK’s largest mortgage lender planned to shift to half-yearly excess-capital returns.
There’s still a risk here. Mortgage competition hasn’t let up, Nunn pointed out, while Morningstar economist Grant Slade called worries over a Bank of England rate hike “overdone”—though he still sees rates holding at 3.75% on Thursday. Lloyds could stay stuck behind peers if pricing tightens further or the glitch causes wider trouble, even if the broader bank sector finds its footing.
Investors stayed wary through the afternoon. Lloyds shares bounced from 96.14 pence up to 98.34 pence during the session, still sitting far under their 52-week peak of 114.60 pence—well off the highs, even with the recent buyback news and July guidance on the horizon.
