Management Toolkit

IT jobs in firing line at RBS

Tim Ferguson silicon.com

Published: 26 May 2009 08:36 BST

The Royal Bank of Scotland is to shed around 700 jobs in its IT and property divisions over the next few months.

The job losses are part of a bank-wide effort to cut £2.5bn in costs which, on 7 April, saw the organisation announce plans to shed around 9,000 jobs globally — including around 4,500 positions in the UK.

When asked what proportion of these 700 jobs are likely to be IT-related, an RBS spokeswoman told ZDNet UK's sister site, silicon.com: "We don't know until we work through the process what that breakdown will be."

She added that a timescale for the job cuts is yet to be set, but said the process of deciding how the cuts will be distributed is likely to take a "couple of months".

Jobs cuts in the property division of the banks could also have an IT impact: the property division of the bank encompasses staff involved in the running and maintaining of the bank's property portfolio including branches, offices and datacentres.

The RBS cuts follow a spate of similar reductions at other financial services institutions: late last year, Credit Suisse and HSBC announced plans to axe 1,150 IT jobs between them, while earlier in May Barclays announced up to 350 additional IT positions were to be cut.