Bradford and Bingley is closing a mortgage processing centre to
cut costs as sales volumes plummet as a result of the credit
crunch.
About 300 call centre staff will go at the processing unit in
Hertfordshire and the work will be transferred to a centre at
Bingley in West Yorkshire.
The company, which specialises in buy to let mortgages, has
struggled since the onset of the credit crisis and lost £26.7m in
the first half of the year.
Processing units, which house IT infrastructures, are prime
targets for cost cutting as business volumes fall.
In July, Barclays announced
job cuts at its FirstPlus loans business when it decided to no
longer offer new loans.
Peter Redshaw, analyst at Gartner, said the last couple of
weeks,
where various banks have been involved in major consolidation,
has accelerated cost cutting activity in the finance sector.
"This was already happening but the last few weeks have
accelerated it," he added. He said banks are moving from a focus on
efficiency to one where they are looking to purely cut costs.
"Processing units can be reduced because certain business lines
are not doing as much business," he added.