A handful of Britain's largest banks have agreed to scrap dividends due to be paid out to shareholders and are keeping funds back to be put toward tackling coronavirus.
The Bank of England has also encouraged banks not to pay out staff bonuses.
Barclays, RBS, HSBC, Natwest, Santander, Standard Chartered and Lloyds are some of the names concerned.
The Prudential Regulation Authority said in a statement: "The extra headroom should help banks support the economy through 2020.
"Although the decisions taken today will result in shareholders not receiving dividends, they are a sensible precautionary step given the unique role that banks need to play in supporting the wider economy through a period of economic disruption."
Lloyds, RBS, Barclays, HSBC and Standard Chartered were expected to pay a combined total of £15.6 billion in dividends to their shareholders.
The move comes after the Bank of England came under pressure to halt dividend and bonus payouts following pressure from Europe.
Last week, the European Central Bank [ECB] urged eurozone banks to freeze dividends until October, after which the likes of Commerzbank, the Bank of Ireland, ING, Unicredit and ABN Amro have all put payouts on hold.
Withholding payouts could allow for an additional €30 billion in resources according to Andrea Enria, the chairman of the ECB's supervisory board.
Since then, Sam Woods, deputy governor of the Bank of England, wrote to a number of bank chiefs encouraging them to freeze dividend payouts and confirm their response by Tuesday evening, with the household names complying.
However, none of the banks stated what would become of staff bonuses in their Tuesday statements.
Nonetheless, shareholders are likely to be dismayed by the decision of the banks, due to the fact that they already have "strong capital positions" to be able to absorb "severe UK and global recessions and a financial markets shock", meaning dividend payouts should not need to be withheld, one anonymous shareholder told the Telegraph.
However, Barclays chairman Nigel Higgins believed the decision was "right and prudent".
