Lloyds 'to slash thousands of jobs' in restructuring plan

The next round of job cuts will be fewer than the 15,000 last time

Antonio Horta-Osorio, Lloyds CEO (Reuters)

Lloyds Banking Group is expected to announce thousands more job cuts at the end of the month as chief executive .

Antonio Horta-Osorio unveils his second three-year plan for the bank, which is 25 per cent owned by the taxpayer.

Numbers have not been finalised with Lloyds’ board of directors due to meet twice before the third-quarter trading announcement.

Institutional investors who met Lloyds’ management including Horta-Osorio and finance director George Culmer recently were told that the next three years would see greater “digitisation” of the bank which would mean fewer jobs.

But the indications were that the next round of cuts, through to 2017, would be fewer than the 15,000 jobs which went in Horta-Osorio’s first three-year cull.

It is also likely more staff would be offered the chance to retrain into new roles away from call centres and administration. Lloyds employs 88,000 people.

Lloyds is also expected to close more branches over the next three years as more of its customers switch to online and mobile banking.