The Royal Bank of Scotland is to close NatWest Insurance's IT
operations as part of its post-merger restructuring.
Nick HuberAbout 80 IT staff are expected to lose their jobs over the next
year under the restructuring, according to union officials.
The realignment shows the risks to IT staff in company mergers
when the dominant company sweeps away duplicated IT systems.
Under the restructuring NatWest's back-office insurance services
will be taken over by the Green Flag group, which is part of the
Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
The shake-up follows the merger last year between NatWest and
Royal Bank of Scotland.
The bank did not say how many IT job losses are expected in the
90-strong insurance department but unions claim that about 80 jobs
will go.
"We are hoping that this will be managed by voluntary redundancy
and that there will not be any compulsory redundancies," said Robin
Haggitt, general secretary of banking union Unifi.
"It's not quite as bad as it sounds," he added.
The job losses will be phased in over the next year although
Royal Bank of Scotland said it would seek to re-deploy affected IT
staff in other parts of the group.
The bank is in the process of centralising IT systems and hopes
to have a unified IT infrastructure across the group by the end of
2003.
IT jobs in the financial services sector can also be jeopardised
when long-term outsourcing agreements are scrapped because they are
not flexible enough to accommodate company mergers and
restructuring.
nick.huber@rbi.co.uk