Lloyds Banking Group is to pay a dividend for the first time since its taxpayer bailout after annual profits quadrupled to £1.76bn in 2014.
The taxpayer is set to net £130m from the payment, which equates to 0.75p-per-share or £535m in total.
It is a sign the bank's recovery plan is on track as the Treasury continues to slowly return Lloyds to private hands through share sales.
Its share price rose 1% in early trading on the FTSE 100 after the development was confirmed.
Chancellor George Osborne said the payout was good news for millions of savers who hold Lloyds shares or have money invested in Lloyds through their pensions.
He added: "Today's results are another major milestone in the recovery of the British economy from the great recession and the bank bailouts."
However, there is likely to be a backlash against the Lloyds chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio, who is in line to net £11.5m in bonuses, including a £7m long-term award set three years ago which was linked to a recovery in the bank's share price.
He told Sky News it was "very important people focus on pay-for-performance for me and my team".
Lloyds' total bonus pool for the year was set at £369m - a decline of almost 4% on last year - and considerably lower than that of RBS for 2014 which on Thursday confirmed it remained loss-making.
Like its high-street rival, Lloyds was rescued in 2008 with a £20bn injection of taxpayer cash which led to it being 40% owned by the Government.
That stake has since been reduced to 24%.
Mr Horta-Osorio said: "Over the last four years we have transformed Lloyds Banking Group into a low cost, low risk, UK-focused retail and commercial bank.
"This has been made possible by the hard work of everyone at the Group. Today's results also demonstrate that our profitability and capital position have improved significantly, and this has enabled the Board, for the first time in over six years, to recommend we pay a dividend to our shareholders.
"While we recognise we have more to do, we enter the next phase of our strategy from a position of strength.
"We will remain focused on our customers, embrace the digital age throughout the whole Group, continue our support for the UK economy and aim to deliver strong and sustainable returns for our shareholders."
Its profits were achieved despite £2.2bn of charges in respect of the mis-selling of payment protection insurance (PPI) during the year - down from over £3bn in 2013 - and other regulatory provisions of £925m, which included its £217m fine for fixing the Libor inter-bank lending rate.
Lloyds said it was expecting 600,000 new PPI complainants in the current financial year and warned it may have to raise its current provision, which currently totals more than £12bn to date.
The bank also confirmed that it had withdrawn from a US Department of Justice programme examining allegations of tax evasion related to its historic private banking operations in Switzerland.
Lloyds said it had completed a process of due diligence related to the investigation and determined no further participation was warranted.
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