Lloyds Banking Group confirmed yesterday it is the latest UK banking giant with plans to axe jobs – with hundreds of job roles being lost completely and 300 being outsourced to a different company.
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The brutal wave of job cuts at the taxpayer-saved bank is predicted to be followed by further cuts at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Barclays.
RBS – whose GBP 3 million hit during the mis-selling scandal is expected to contribute to a predicted annual loss of GBP 8 billion – is also planning to announce a substantial wave of job cuts to save costs.
Meanwhile Barclays is gearing up remove several hundred investment bankers, and produced fresh fears of further job cuts after it revealed the bank may close a quarter of its branches in coming years.
Barclays
Last November, Barclays announced that its drive to replace workers with machines would account for nearly 1,700 job losses.
Barclays has also begun a clamp down on travel expenses – urging employees to cut any unnecessary face-to-face meetings to save on flights.
The developments come as new boss Antony Jenkins settles into his role at the helm of the bank and pushes proposals that favour cost cutting and technology over jobs.
Whilst Barclays had declined to comment on Tuesday, in a presentation to analysts Jenkins repeatedly made references to the effect of technology on the bank – which has already created a 10% reduction in customer branch use in the last half decade.
Lloyds in detail
As part of a recently announced strategic review, state-owned Lloyds Banking Group has announced job cuts which will take the total number of job losses to nearly 35,000 since 2008.
Of the nearly 1,080 laid off workers across the country, over half were Relationship Managers – those in charge of handling relations with small businesses.
310 cuts will also be made to mail processing jobs, which will be lost to an outside firm, the bank stated.
A statement read: “Lloyds Banking Group is committed to working through these changes with employees in a careful and sensitive way.”
“The Group’s recognised unions Accord, Unite and LTU were consulted prior to this announcement.”
However, Rob MacGregor, a national officer at Unite, has slammed the job losses, noting: “While staff at Lloyds continue to work hard to deliver half-year profits of GBP 2 billion, management has confirmed it is to give 1,390 staff another kick.”
He also stated that the 1,080 staff who have worked at the bank will be rewarded with “a P45.”
“Lloyds Banking Group is well on the road to recovery, with the chief executive being recently rewarded handsomely with a share bonus in the region of GBP 2.5 million, yet staff are being made redundant.”
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