Thousands of female employees of Lloyds Bank along with the Lloyds Trade Union are to take the bank to the High Court over less generous.

According to the LTU, female employees are claiming that they have lower pensions than their male counterparts as a result of unequal guaranteed minimum pensions.

The Union’s legal case how now been lodged with the High Court and could cost the bank as much as £508m, affecting about 230,000 Lloyds banking pension scheme and HBOS final salary pension scheme members, the LTU has revealed.

The unequal benefits have been attributed to payments to men and women who accrued GMPs in the 1980s and 1990s, which were then ended in 1997. On the whole, these pension payments were lower for women because the schemes calculated the benefits with women’s earlier state pension age of 60 in mind, five years earlier than men.

According to the pensions industry, the LTU noted, the cost of equalising pensions across the 2,400 contracted out pension schemes could be up to £20bn.

Lloyds’ pension trustee has assisted in taking action against the firm as the difference in pension totals is an example of gender inequality, which is illegal under European Law, The Times noted.

The LTU expects that the case will be heard by the High Court later this year.

The union has stated that: “the Trustee seeks the Court’s ruling on whether the equalisation obligation (if any) is only engaged if an opposite sex comparator can be identified for the affected member, or if the obligation arises without the need to identify a comparator.

“If there is an equalisation obligation, is there a single correct method by which the Trustee should seek to achieve such equalisation of benefits (and, if so, what is that method)? As part of this question, the Trustee seeks the Court’s ruling on whether it must as a matter of law adopt one of the methods identified already, or some other method of equalisation.”

A Lloyds spokesman said: “The group supports the trustee in seeking a resolution so that it can bring an end to decades of uncertainty and provide clarity to interested parties”.

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