Bank of Ireland to cut 1,400 jobs as Covid-19 accounts for most of €669m loss
Bank of Ireland is to seek 1,400 job cuts through a redundancy programme.
A bank spokesperson said it had launched a voluntary redundancy programme across its network in the hope that staff numbers will reduce to fewer than 9,000.
It has a current workforce of 10,400.
It comes after the bank reported a loss before tax of €669m for the first six months of this year, partly due to Covid-19.
The bank had put aside €937m most of which was to cover losses from Covid-19 loan repayment breaks.
In a statement, CEO Francesca McDonagh said Covid-19 has had a material impact on the Group’s financial performance and outlook.
“Our priority in the pandemic has been to proactively support our customers, colleagues and communities, and to stay focussed on delivering our strategy,” she said.
“We put in place a wide range of supports for customers – including more than 100,000 payment breaks in Ireland and the UK and we transformed how we operate.
“Notwithstanding the challenges, we’ve increased our market share in Irish mortgages, reduced costs, and continued to improve our products and services especially through digital.”
She said the group’s capital remains “strong and resilient” with its outlook now “cautiously more optimistic” than it was at the end of March.
Ms McDonagh also said the bank has significantly cut costs in recent years.
Ms McDonagh said: "Actually we've had a very positive story in terms of becoming more efficient. We've taken, as a bank, over a quarter of a billion euros out of our costs of running our business in the last two and a half years.
"We've invested some of that in our technology and also in our people.
"We want to attract, retain and develop our talent. We are reporting today that our costs have gone down another 3% in the first six months of this year."
