Lloyds takes 4.3 billion pound hit on PPI, Ireland

LONDON (Reuters) - British bank Lloyds said it will take a 3.2 billion pounds ($5.3 billion) provision to cover it for losses from the mis-selling of protection insurance and suffered another 1.1 billion hit in Ireland.

The part-nationalized bank said it made the provision against payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints after UK banks last month lost a UK court case on the sale of how policies were sold to millions of customers.

It followed discussion with Britain's financial watchdog, and could see rivals also make big provisions.

Lloyds reported a statutory loss of 3.5 billion pounds in the first quarter, compared to a 721 million pound profit a year ago. It said its pretax profit was 284 million pounds before the PPI provision and other one-off items.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Steve Slater; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

($1=.6052 pounds)