Lloyds Banking Group to axe 9,000 jobs and 200 branches

Unions reacted with anger on Tuesday after Lloyds Banking Group revealed plans to axe 9,000 jobs and close 200 branches as it “digitises” its business.

The 24%-taxpayer owned bank announced its latest round of job cuts – which come on top of 45,000 posts already lost since the rescue of HBOS in 2008 – as it stunned the City by taking a further £900m provision for misselling payment protection insurance.

The latest money set aside takes its total bill so far to more than £11bn and the bank admitted it could take a further £600m charge in the fourth quarter if complaints remain at their current level.

Outlining a new three-year strategy for the bank, chief executive António Horta-Osório said: “This is a highly competitive market and customers’ behaviour is changing. Increasingly our customers want to access our services in many different ways, via branches, via digital or via mobile.”

“Regrettably”, he said, this would require 9,000 job cuts from the 85,000-strong workforce as the business was “digitised” and also involve revoking its three-year commitment not to shut branches where it was the “last bank in town”. The move is intended to save £1bn by 2017, the period over which the job cuts are expected to take place.

Business secretary Vince Cable is to urge banks to come up with a new commitment to avoid towns losing their last branch – a pledge that 81%-taxpayer-owned bank Royal Bank of Scotland broke in April.

“I am suggesting that banks and the post office work more closely together to ensure a long term solution to financial access can be found using existing networks, in a sustainable way,” Cable said. Lord Blackwell, the Lloyds chairman, said the digital transformation came against a backdrop of “a pace of change across the UK financial services sector that is unprecedented, with more fundamental change happening over the next 10 years than has happened over the last 200 years”.

But officials at Unite responded angrily. “The wallets of top executives at Lloyds should not be getting fat by forcing low-paid workers on to the dole. If there are compulsory redundancies or customer service suffers then executive pay should be cut,” said Unite national officer Rob MacGregor, who said the union would be pressing for no compulsory redundancies. The bank said 1,000 redundancies out of 15,000 in the last three years had been compulsory.

Ged Nichols, general secretary of the Accord union, said: “The union is concerned that customer service standards and employee morale will suffer if all operations are not properly resourced. In particular, staff in smaller branches are concerned about the possible security implications of any further reductions in staff numbers.”

The 200 branch closures – 6% of its network – will largely affect its Lloyds and Bank of Scotland fascias and not Halifax branches. More Halifax branches could open and the bank said 50 more could be opened in total, meaning 150 from the group would be shut at the end of the three years. Jobs will not just be lost from branches.

The new hit for PPI mis-selling kept Lloyds’ profits flat at £1.6bn for the first nine months of the year despite a 59% fall in the charge for bad debts, which have been one of the biggest impediments to profits since the bailout.

The City is awaiting news of the bank’s ability to start paying dividends for the first time since the 2008 crisis. There have been concerns over Lloyds’ ability to resume payments to shareholders, particularly as it emerged as the weakest of the UK banks in the latest stress tests on the banking industry announced on Sunday.

George Culmer, the finance director, said the bank still hoped to be able to pay a dividend for the financial year 2014 after discussions with the Bank of England. Threadneedle Street will publish the outcome of its own stress tests on 16 December and Culmer indicated that he expected Lloyds to pass.

Even so, the bank’s shares fell 2.4% to 73.5p, just below the 73.6p average price at which taxpayers ploughed £20bn into the bank in 2008. The government has reduced its stake in Lloyds from 43% but has signalled that no more shares will be sold before the election in May.

Horta-Osório, whose bonus is linked to the share price, said the bank had become “a safe, highly efficient, UK-focused retail and commercial bank”.

He took the helm in March 2011 after being hired from the UK arm of Santander and said he intended to stay to see through his new three-year plan. “I’m already thinking about the next strategy after that,” he said.