The bank stressed that the move was being made to ensure it was managing “risks to our business and for our customers”. But Ray Boulger of the broker John Charcoal, suggested it was introducing the measure to ward off regulators. “The higher a person’s income, the more they can afford to allocate to a mortgage, so from a pure mortgage risk point of view this doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Lloyds may have taken a calculated decision that doing this on their terms will prevent the BoE from doing something more onerous.”