Lloyds Banking Group, UK’s largest mortgage lender, will eliminate another 1,230 jobs as part of a cost-cutting program that started in October 2014
Lloyds announced in July it would be cutting a further 3,000 jobs and closing an additional 200 branches amid a more economic environment caused by Britain's vote to leave the EU. The total number of jobs cut since the announcement of an efficiency drive in 2014 will stand at 12,000 by the end of next year.
Employee union Unite described the job losses, expected to hit the lender's retail banking as well as other divisions, as “horrific”.
Rob MacGregor, national officer of the Unite union, said: “Job losses within this taxpayer-backed institution are wholly unacceptable."
“The constant flow of job cuts across LBG must now be halted and staff be allowed to get on with delivering the high quality and impressive service they are so good at providing. The Lloyds management pursuit of this cuts agenda is counter-productive in their aim of a successful business.
Lloyds said in a statement: "This process involves taking difficult decisions, and we are committed to working through these changes in a careful and sensitive way."
"Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, it will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort."
The bank has already cut about 4,000 positions from its 75,000-strong workforce in 2016 and has closed around 100 branches so far in 2016.
Lloyds has slumped 27 per cent this year in London trading, its the second-worst performance among major British lenders.
The Government has last week scrapped its plans to launch its long anticipated retail sales of shares of the 9 per cent of Lloyds Bank it still owes to British taxpayers.
British taxpayers still hold about £3.6 billion shares in Lloyds, after bailing the bank out during the financial crisis.
This means shares will not be sold as a “retail offer” to the public but instead gradually sold into the institutional investment market to ensure a full return of the bank to the private sector.
Additional reporting by Reuters
