RBS CFO: ‘It’s inevitable that there will be further job cuts’

LONDON — Royal Bank of Scotland’s chief financial officer has said it is “inevitable” that there will be more job cuts at the government-owned lender.

Ewen Stevenson told Bloomberg TV: “It’s inevitable that there will be further job cuts, but we are not going to talk publicly about figures.”

Stevenson said job losses were coming as part of the bank’s digital transformation plan, announced last week. RBS announced a £2.5 billion restructuring plan last week that Stevenson told Bloomberg would create “a better bank in 2020, a better bank equipped for digitization.”

RBS’s staff numbers fell 8.5% last year to 71,200 and many banks are cutting headcount as customers move online, leaving branch networks overstaffed.

Antony Jenkins, the former CEO of Barclays, predicted in late 2015 that Uber-style disruptions could shrink headcount in banking by as much as 50%, while profitability in some areas could collapse by over 60%.