Charlie Nunn, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group – the UK’s biggest bank, providing one in four current accounts – has a deep insight into how customers spend, save and borrow. His top tips? Automate your savings and talk openly about money with your partner.
Nunn says the key to building savings is to stop making it a decision. “If you’re able to carve out a little bit and put it somewhere else where you won’t have access to it and be able to spend it, I think that’s the easiest way to start having a saving mindset,” he explains. That could mean setting up a standing order from your current account to a savings account, organising cash into different envelopes or using round-up tools that put spare change aside when you spend.
“Lloyds CEO Charlie Nunn advises automating savings and being transparent about money in relationships.”
He recommends “saving little, saving early and saving regularly”. And, admitting he “hates budgeting and always has”, Nunn says he looks at his current account as soon as he gets paid and decides how much to move into savings. “Do it as soon as you can,” he adds.
Alongside savings, he advises having an emergency fund for surprise bills like a broken boiler or car repairs. How much you need depends on your circumstances but he suggests having one to three months’ salary set aside if possible.
When it comes to relationships, Nunn and his wife use a joint account and have “complete transparency” over money, he says. His red flag is “someone who isn’t careful with money” because he has always been “relatively prudent”.
His attitude was shaped by childhood: his parents divorced and his mother raised four children, meaning he grew up thinking carefully about spending. “We were constantly worrying about what we were spending money on and managing money carefully which ranged from looking for cheap food in the supermarket to thinking carefully about holidays and what we did in our spare time.”
Nunn says his children “take no advice from me because I’m their dad” but he has tried to make them understand the value of money. “They have pocket money which helps them budget and they live within their means,” he says. Two of his children are more comfortable spending, while others are more natural savers – which he says reflects what the bank sees among customers too.
He does not think younger people are generally financially irresponsible but is concerned about the bigger challenges they face – a thought left hanging as the interview ended, underscoring the pressures that even the boss of Britain’s biggest bank cannot fully address.
