15,000 More jobs axed in Lloyds cost-cutting drive
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Lloyds Banking Group is cutting another 15,000 jobs as part of a strategic review that places Scottish Widows at the heart of its future bancassurance strategy.
The job losses are part of a package of cuts aimed at saving £1.5bn a year by the end of 2014. The bank has already cut around 27,000 jobs since it stepped in to rescue HBOS in January 2009.
The cost-cutting programme will save the bank £2.3bn by the end of 2014.
The bank has also revealed its plans to retain Scottish Widows as it looks to boost its bancassurance operations and attempt to profit from the mass market advice gap after the retail distribution review.
Last week, Moneymarketing.co.uk revealed group chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio’s desire to put Widows “front and centre” of the bank’s future strategy, with a focus on its intermediary and bancassurance offerings.
Lloyds says it wants to be “the primary wealth adviser” to its “mass affluent, affluent and high-net-worth customers”.
It says it is aiming to more than triple the number of “in-proposition customers” on its books and to increase income per customer by more than 50 per cent by 2014.
Lloyds says it will invest in new bancassurance advice models for protection and investments, which it suggests will be “simple, self-service propositions with integrated planning tools”.
The bank expects to increase its bancassurance customer numbers by 50 per cent by 2014 from 2.1 million in 2010 to 3.1 million.
It has also announced it expects to identify a purchaser for 632 of its branches by the end of this year, with the deal set to conclude by the end of 2013, and issued an information memorandum to prospective buyers with indicative offers set to be made by mid-July.
Horta-Osorio says: “Our aim is to become the best bank for customers. We have around 30 million customers, iconic brands, including Lloyds TSB, Halifax, Bank of Scotland and Scottish Widows, and high-quality, committed people.
“We will unlock the potential in this franchise over time by creating a simpler, more agile and responsive organisation and by making substantial investments in better-value products and services for our customers, to deliver strong, stable and sustainable returns for our shareholders.”
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