If you anticipate a flat GPS award every year, and take flex into account, then most of the changes are money you would have seen anyway. However, we have seen in recent years that GPS can fluctuate so we feel it is better to have the money guaranteed than dependent on external factors.

Your DC pension contributions, the bank’s contribution, your GPS potential and your flex calculations are all made based on the salary at the top of your pay slip. Therefore, if this increases, all of these should increase as well.

Not through pension contributions at the minute. Our pension team are consistently asking the bank to review the pension cap but this hasn’t changed since 2014. We feel this is unfair and will continue to push for a fairer way to address this. Don’t forget, accepting annual pay awards is seen by the bank as accepting the DB pension cap.

You will receive an uplift to the new minimum of the pay range. Nobody should be paid less than the minimum of their pay range (pro-rated if you work less than 35 hours).

This would have made things simpler, for sure. The bank wanted to make sure that their overall reward package was consistent with the market and made these changes based on these findings. Unite are continuing our investigations into fair market rates and will update members with our findings.

Email LBG.Support@unitetheunion.org or complete our ‘Contact Us’ form on our website, www.uniteinlbg.org and one of our reward team will try and help you understand.

Any calculation of market position needs to take your car allowance into consideration. This should be done now even if you still haven’t consolidated your allowance.

Mortgage applications often don’t include flex and can also exclude bonuses if they’re not contractual. These changes will increase the amount that a mortgage advisor will take into account and will also increase the amount that you can potentially borrow through a staff concessionary mortgage.

The grade that you are performing on 1st July will be used to calculate any GPS and flex consolidation, meaning that you take advantage of the April 2023 pay award.

GPS is, as always, subject to a number of criteria. However, let’s imagine for this purpose that there is a similar award as last year. Grades A-C will likely receive 5% as usual, with managerial ability to adjust upwards for exceptional circumstances. Grade D&E will have had 5% or 10% respectively consolidated, so the remaining 5% that you may expect for ‘on-target’ performance would now be fixed, like A-C, with discretion to increase. For Grades F-G, 10% will have been consolidate, but the remainder of your previous GPS range will be available for a discretionary GPS award.