Spanish bank Santander will cut 1,900 jobs across its
three UK businesses in 2009, with reductions in the back office
planned as IT is migrated to the bank'sPartenon core banking platform.
Back office jobs at Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and
Bradford & Bingley will be cut to help the bank meet its
cost savings targets.
"To continue growing its UK business and enable further
investment in its frontline services and branches, Santander will
be making efficiencies through transferring operations onto
Santander's proprietary IT platform, Partenon, as well as removing
duplicated back office and support functions across the
businesses," said the bank in a statement.
Banco Santander has a strategy to grow by acquisition and
integrate the IT operations of the firms it buys with its Partenon
platform to make cost savings.
The bank completed the migration of Abbey to Partenon in the
summer - a key element in its plans to reduce costs at Abbey by
£300m. Santander expects to make efficiency savings of £180m partly
by
mov
ing All
i
ance & Leicester onto Partenon.