Lloyds Banking Group is set to lay off another 865 employees across its UK operations as it resumed its cost-cutting steps amid losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the six months ended 30 June 2020, Lloyds Banking Group reported a statutory profit after tax of £19m, a 99% decline from the statutory profit after tax of £2.22bn made in H1 2019.
The impacted personnel from the latest job cuts are from the bank’s back office processing functions and head office departments, said trade union Unite.
The trade union said that the bank has also announced that it intends to create 220 new jobs across the organisation. However, it will not give any solace for the nearly 900 employees who have been told about their layoffs, said Unite.
The British banking major had briefly paused the job cuts and an announced restructuring at the start of the pandemic.
Unite national officer Rob MacGregor said: “The pandemic has demonstrated the amazing resilience and flexibility of this workforce. The employer should not focus solely on cutting jobs and costs but instead the bank should invest in a workforce that has only shown loyalty, dedication and hard work through the good times, and the bad.”
Accord’s take on the latest job cuts at Lloyds Banking Group
On the other hand, financial services union Accord said that following the latest announcement, there will be 639 lesser jobs in Lloyds Banking Group, with most of them planned prior to the Covid-19 outbreak but were put on hold.
The union had put the number of new jobs to be created at 226, while adding that the job cuts will be from the bank’s insurance and wealth, retail, finance and commercial banking units.
Accord said that the job cuts will be handled through a joint agreement with it on redundancy terms. The current redundancy terms have been extended up to the end of 2023, said Accord.
The job cuts have been confirmed by Lloyds Banking Group, reported Reuters, adding that most of the roles that would go are non-customer facing and are a result of simplification of its business.
The publication quoted a spokeswoman of the bank, as saying: “These changes primarily reflect our existing plans to simplify parts of our businesses, which were in place prior to Covid-19.
“Any colleague impacted by today’s announcement will not leave the Group until November at the earliest.”
In February 2020, the banking group said that it would cut 780 jobs across its branches in the UK due to lesser visits from customers owing to increased digital banking.
