Co-operative Financial Services is to cut 1000 back office jobs by the end of the year in a bid to save £100 million in annual operating costs and prepare the bank for a new era of Internet-based competition.
The latest round of redundancies at the Manchester-based Co-op come three years after the firm axed 2500 staff and promised to switch more business to direct channels. Unions described the latest cuts, which will affect 10% of the bank's total workforce, as "brutal".
David Anderson, the chief executive of CFS, says that the modernisation programme is a necessity and that compulsory redundancies are "inevitable". He says the firm's financial services business has been hit hard by declining branch use, and fierce competition from online insurers.
Job losses will come mostly from back office staff across the general insurance, bank and online operations. No front-line staff are threatened and the bank says no branches will be closed, although the use of suppliers will be re-appraised.