LONDON—Lloyds Banking Group has been hit by more than 300 million pounds ($348 million) of suspected fraud linked to COVID-19 pandemic-era recovery loans for small businesses, the highest among big bank peers, according to government data.
British banks overall have classified some 1.1 billion pounds worth of the emergency lending scheme known as “bounce back” loans as fraud, the data published on Monday by Britain’s Department for Business, Energy and Industry (BEIS) showed.
Lloyds is the worst hit among big banks by net amount, and also saw a higher ratio of likely fraud with some 3.6 percent of its 8.5 billion pounds of bounce back loans categorized as under suspicion, according to a Reuters calculation from the data….