Lloyds Set To Axe ‘Thousands Of Jobs’
The taxpayer-owned banking group is to reduce staff through greater automation, in a plan to be announced at the end of the month
Lloyds Banking Group is to announce thousands of job cuts in a three-year plan set to be announced at the end of October, according to reports.
The cull follows on from the 15,000 redundancies implemented in the previous three-year period, partly as a result of the integration of HBOS, taken over by Lloyds in January 2009. Lloyds, which employs 88,000 staff, is itself 25 percent owned by the taxpayer as a result of UK government rescue packages in 2008 and 2009.
Ongoing cuts
The number of job cuts is yet to be finalised, according to reports, with Lloyds’ board of directors due to meet twice before the bank’s third-quarter trading announcement on 28 October. A report in The Independent said the number was likely to be lower than the previous cull.
Some staff are to be offered retraining for roles away from call centres and administration, according to the report. The bank is also expected to close more branches as part of the three-year plan as customers switch to online and mobile banking.
The staff reductions will be achieved as part of a digitisation and automation strategy that will reduce human interaction in mortgage processing and new account processing, among other tasks, according to The Times.
The bank declined to comment on the reports.
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