FILE PHOTO: A woman looks at her phone as she walks past a branch of Lloyds Bank in London, Britain, July 20, 2018. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s biggest domestic bank Lloyds (LLOY.L) is planning to axe 780 jobs as part of ongoing cost-cutting at the lender, union Unite said on Wednesday.
The union said the bank had informed its workforce of the planned cuts and described the move as “deeply alarming”.
A spokesman for Lloyds did not immediately comment.
The cuts come after Lloyds reported a 26% drop in annual profits last week, after being hit by bad debts and billions of pounds of customer compensation.
Lloyds has cut around 5,000 staff in the last two years, going from around 68,000 employees at the end of 2017 to just 63,000 at the end of 2019 according to company filings.
Britain’s banks have continued to made deep cuts to their workforces in response to squeezed profit margins and customers ditching high street branches in favor of digital services.
“The decision by Lloyds Banking Group to cut the equivalent of 780 staff from its branches is yet more evidence of the bank’s profits over people culture,” said Scott Doyle of Unite.
Reporting by Iain Withers and Sinead Cruise, Editing by Lawrence White