Royal Bank of Scotland is to restructure its business with the loss of up to 2,300 jobs, the company announced today.
RBS, which owns the Ulster Bank and First Active group in the Republic, said the cuts would not affect customer-facing branch staff and pledged to make every effort to keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum.
The bank, now 68 per cent-owned by the British government, said the cuts represent around 2 per cent of the group's workforce of 106,000.
Alan Dickinson, chief executive of RBS UK, said: "We recognise that any news of this nature is unwelcome at any time. It is essential, however, that we consistently review our business to ensure that we are able to operate as efficiently as possible, especially in the current economic circumstances.
"We will be consulting with our recognised trade union, Unite, and our employees throughout. We fully agree with Unite that we must keep compulsory redundancies to a minimum and we will.
"Everyone at RBS is focused on delivering for our customers and restoring the health of the overall organisation. Staff have given everything they have over the last year, which makes the decision to cut any job an extremely tough one.
"We will do everything we can to mitigate the impact on our people and keep job losses and compulsory redundancies to the minimum."