Lloyds Bank cutting 930 jobs
Black days
Lloyds is axing 930 jobs within its commercial banking, chief information office, community banking, insurance, and wealth and risk management.
According to the Bristol Post, Lloyds CEO Antonio Horta-Osorio will announce more details on the three-year strategy on 21 February. (Lloyds has offices on Bristol Harbourside.)
No customer-facing jobs in the bank’s branches will be affected. Lloyds says it will create 465 roles in the future and “staff involved in the consultation will have the opportunity to apply for the positions”.
The Bristol Post adds that the affected employees were briefed at the end of January and have been told they will be redeployed where possible, but Lloyds will also be encouraging voluntary redundancies.
Horta-Osorio’s plan will be announced alongside the bank’s full-year results and is expected to focus on cost savings, online banking and wealth management.
As reported in November by FinTech Futures, UK trade union Unite revealed that Lloyds informed staff it will be closing another 49 branches of the Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Lloyds, resulting in 99 job losses.
That grim news followed on from March, when Lloyds said it plans to outsource its tech to IBM in a seven-year deal worth £1.3 billion. More than 1,900 jobs will be shifted to IBM and £760 million of costs will be cut as a result.
Also, as reported in November 2016, Lloyds announced it was getting rid of a further 49 branches and 665 jobs. The bank will offer services via mobile vans to the communities affected by the branch closures.
Lloyds was bailed out in 2008 and has been on a restructuring path since. It has separated and sold its domestic retail business, TSB (now owned by Spanish banking group Sabadell), and is looking to shed 12,000 jobs and close 400 branches by the end of 2017.
The bank says that the branch use across its brands (Lloyds, HBOS and Bank of Scotland) has been falling 15% year on year – hence the closures are necessary.
Moratorium
Also today (6 February), and in a separate development. Unite, the UK union representing staff working across Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) says it demanded that the bank put in place an immediate moratorium on their branch closure programme.
Following the announcement by the bank that it is halting the planned closure of ten of its branches in Scotland previously earmarked for closure, Unite is demanding the bank take the same action for impacted branches across England and Wales.
As reported in December, RBS announced it was closing 259 more branches and axing 680 jobs.
The union welcomes the news that the RBS and NatWest branches in Scotland will remain open, following Unite campaigning and political pressure.
Rob MacGregor, Unite national officer, says: “Instead of deserting communities in England and Wales Unite is calling on RBS to put a moratorium on all the planned bank branch closures.”
