Royal Bank of Scotland to cut 450 more jobs in UK

Royal Bank of Scotland is to announce more job cuts across its services and support divisions as it refocuses its UK operations, reports said on 29 May. At least another 450 job cuts will be made in the UK on top of the 600 announced last month, according to the Financial Times newspaper.

Some of the axed positions will be shifted to India to reduce costs.

In February, RBS reported a loss of £2bn (€2.6bn; $2.9bn) for 2015 – its eighth consecutive year of annual losses.

Continuing efforts to restructure the business, which is 73% owned by the UK government after it was bailed out during the financial crisis, are expected to lead to more losses in the coming months.

UK focus

About 200 jobs will be cut from RBS's services team across UK and 43 of these positions will be moved to India, the report said.

An additional 250 jobs will be axed from the retail bank support division, including operations and customer service jobs.

"As RBS becomes a smaller UK-focused bank, we are restructuring our support services to better align with the business we are becoming. These changes unfortunately mean some job losses," a statement from RBS read.

"We understand how difficult this is for our staff and will be offering as much support as we can including redeployment to other roles where possible." In April, RBS had announced that it would shut 32 of its NatWest branches and slash 600 jobs amid falling footfall.

This has coincided with the rise in internet and mobile banking, with more customers preferring to avail services online. RBS chief executive Ross McEwan warned employees to expect more cost saving measures in 2016 as he attempts to return the bank to profitability and resume dividend payouts for the first time since the 2008 bailout.