Member Article

Lloyds Bank set to axe 9,000 jobs

Lloyds Banking Group is planning to axe branches and cut around 9,000 jobs, around a tenth of its entire workforce, over the next three years.

According to the BBC, Chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio, under whom the bank has returned to profitability, is expected to outline his latest plans for Lloyds on Tuesday, alongside the bank’s latest financial results.

These changes are believed to be in reaction to the shift from physical branches to online banking.

According to the BAA, the banking trade body, digital banking transactions are now worth almost £1 billion a day, with almost 40 million mobile and internet banking transactions every week.

Lloyds commitment to maintain branch numbers as a condition of its takeover of HBOS in 2009, which expires at the end of this year.

The bank nearly collapsed in 2008 and 2009, having to be bailed out at the height of the recession, with the government still owning a 25% stake in the bank, down from 39% after two sales shares over the past year.

Since its bailout, Lloyds has axed 30,000 jobs, and announced a further 15,000 job cuts as part of a three-year plan in 2011.

Lloyds already got rid of more than 630 branches through its flotation of the TSB business earlier this year.

It currently operates more than 2,000 branches across the country through its remaining Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland, and Halifax brands.

Lloyds posted its first annual profit since the financial crisis last year, although it has also been hit by Payment Protection mis-selling costs, and a multi-million pound settlement related to the Libor scandal.

Excluding those charges, it made an underlying profit of £3.8 billion in the first six months of this year.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Clare Burnett .