Royal Bank of Scotland plans to cut 900 jobs in the UK, taking the total number of staff losses to 2,700 over the past four months, according to Reuters.
The roles would be lost in IT and back-office positions across the bank’s operations as the bailed-out bank attempts to cut costs in its bid to return to the private sector.
At the start of the year, RBS had 64,000 UK staff in the UK but since then jobs have been cut across most of its operations in retail, commercial and investment banking, as well as its IT functions.
Ross McEwan, the chief executive of the 73% taxpayer-owned bank, set a target to save £800m in 2016. While he acknowledged this could result in job cuts, he didn’t specify how many roles would be lost.
The cuts are part of efforts to scale back the global ambitions of RBS, which had operations in about 50 countries with approximately 180,000 staff at the time of its bailout, to focus on domestic retail banking.
RBS said: “We understand how difficult this is for our staff and will be offering as much support as we can, including redeployment to other roles where possible. The bank’s global workforce is 87,800.
McEwan, who took over from Stephen Hester in October 2013, is focusing RBS on 13 countries. He is also adapting the bank for the digital age by closing branches and automating services.
As part of the move to reduce its global presence, the bank is looking to increase the profile of its NatWest brand in England and Wales. As part of this, it is in talks to sponsor English cricket and have its logo replace Waitrose’s on the shirts of cricket players.
