Do these big bosses of the building associations really need such huge pay packages? asks JEFF PRESTRIDGE

It is the time of year when most building societies start publishing their annual reports and accounts.

While such financial books are hardly recommended bedtime reading, they do shed light on the health of an industry that offers many savers an alternative home for their money from the banks.

Although not all building societies are the same, they tend to be more customer-focused than banks.

For example, they often have branches in cities that have long since abandoned the banks, while the smaller ones tend to be community-oriented.

They are also more amenable to keeping savings accounts – much favored by the elderly – and tend to have branches dominated by friendly staff rather than banks with cash deposit and withdrawal machines.

But as we look through the 2023 calendar annual accounts that have ended up in the public domain so far, there is a recurring theme that should appeal to many hard-pressed households – and that is the high pay in the boardrooms.

Despite the financial difficulties still facing many households across the country, bosses at the top ten building societies Leeds, Coventry, Nottingham and Principality all received double-digit percentage increases in their pay last year.

Steve Hughes from Coventry saw his pay package break the £1 million mark to £1,086,000 – a 12.3 per cent increase on the previous year.

His pay was increased by performance-related pay of £447,000. Richard Fearon, his counterpart at Leeds, received a 14.6 per cent pay rise, taking his total pay to £862,000, while JulieAnn Haines and Susan Hayes at Principality and Nottingham saw increases of 18.2 and 25.8 per cent respectively (Hayes was only CEO for nine months in 2022).

In contrast, Skipton and Newcastle bosses saw their overall pay fall. Nationally (the largest company by a country mile) the year ends at the beginning of April, while Cumberland and West Brom’s accounts run until the end of this month. So these accounts will be unavailable for a while.

This leaves Yorkshire. New CEO Susan Allen OBE joined the association in March 2023 from Barclays, where she was head of customer transformation.

Her reward from Yorkshire last year was decidedly transformative: an eyebrow-raising £4,046,000, including a £777,000 bonus (for nine months of hard work) and a £2.5 million ‘replacement award’ (compensation for the prizes and incentive opportunities she lost by to walk out of Barclays to join Yorkshire).

To put this into perspective, Nationwide boss Debbie Crosbie received £3,455,000 in the year ending April 4, 2023, including a replacement award of £1,705,000 for bonuses lost by leaving TSB to join the mutual to close.

Yes, it is imperative that building societies are run by some of the most talented people in the financial services industry. But there is a fine line between appropriate and excessive pay. I’ll leave it to you to decide which side of the line Allen et al. are on.

Send me an email with your opinion jeff.prestridge@ mailonsuday.co.uk.

Why the wheels are coming off TfL’s cash cow

After a false start, common sense has finally prevailed at Transport for London, the organization responsible for the financial scourge of the Ultra Low Emission Zone – and its sister scourge, the congestion charge.

In response to my article last week about Louise Matz, a resident of Greater London, who was fined £12.50 for a no longer compliant Ulez car that was piggybacked around London from a carrier, TfL has now granted her a refund.

In a note to Louise, TfL’s customer correspondence manager confirmed that vehicles being towed are not liable to pay the Ulez charge – and that her initial payment request for a refund should not have been rejected. It added: ‘The letter you received stating that it was correctly debited was sent in error.’

Although Louise is pleased that a check is currently on its way to her home in Pinner, it really shouldn’t take any media intervention to get TfL to apply the charging rules fairly.

How many drivers like Louise have challenged incorrect charges, only to be dismissed by a revenue-focused TfL? Challenges need to be addressed much more sensitively and respectfully.

It was simply not good enough for TfL to reject Louise’s initial complaint as she had failed to remove her old car’s details from the auto-payment service. This was a red herring. The blatant lie was that they had “reviewed the vehicle image captured on camera” and concluded that the charge had “correctly been upgraded.” Excessive.

One final point on this matter. Transport drivers are required to cover the number plates of the cars they are moving so that they do not appear on roadside cameras (thanks to reader Peter Legind, from Saxmundham in Suffolk, for kindly pointing this out).

Perhaps TfL should remind the companies behind these hauliers of their legal obligations – rather than impose unfair fines.

No wonder Ulez is seen as nothing more than a TfL cash cow.

Beware of Japanese Bank Fraud (via Ukraine)

Although most financial scams are now perpetrated via email or text message, some fraudsters continue to rely on Royal Mail to deliver their deception letters to their intended victims (they prefer to fool them).

Reader Catherine Pole, from Radlett in Hertfordshire, has just received such a letter.

It’s a variation on the infamous Nigerian scam letters of the 1990s, but her version (allegedly) originated in Japan and has a nasty Ukrainian twist.

Sent on behalf of Katsunori Tanizaki, a director of Japan’s SBI Shinsei Bank, it invites Catherine to apply for a share of $89 million (£70 million) left by Martyn Pole at the bank.

Martyn, the letter said, was a Hong Kong oil magnate who died along with his entire immediate family at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Tanizaki is convinced that the money should not go unclaimed, so he wants to introduce Catherine as the next of kin.

By doing this, he claims they can enjoy Mr Pole’s wealth together – 45 percent goes to Catherine, 50 percent to Tanizaki (so he can help Ukrainian refugees) and 5 percent to cover any costs.

He concludes his letter with: “I assure you that the operation is 100 percent legal and risk-free – only if you follow my instructions.”

He then invites Catherine to contact him via his private email – presumably so he can then get her to provide her bank details so he can defraud her; or persuade her to part with money for the bounty she will never see a cent of.

Of course the letter is a scam from start to finish. Although there is a real Katsunori Tanizaki who works for SBI Shinsei Bank, it is not a letter he wrote; his name was simply cloned by the fraudster.

Catherine sent the correspondence to me because she wanted to warn other readers who received a version of it not to respond to Mr. Tanizaki’s offer of “fool’s gold.”

For the record, I have asked SBI Shinsei Bank for comment on the letter. At the end of the match on Friday this had not yet been achieved.