LONDON (Reuters) – British lender Virgin Money will restart a redundancy and branch closure programme that was paused due to the coronavirus crisis, it said on Wednesday.
Virgin Money said it would also press on with rebranding its Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank branches by January 2021, a plan that was shelved in May.
The bank said it would make around 300 redundancies for the time being, 200 fewer than previously planned.
It will also close 22 branches and consolidate a further 30, resulting in a total reduction of 52, unchanged from before.
Virgin Money announced the planned cuts in February as part of a cost-cutting programme begun following the merger of Virgin Money and Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banking Group in 2018.
The lender posted a first-half pretax loss in May after booking a 232 million pound ($288 million) provision for bad loans and likely defaults due to the pandemic.
Virgin Money follows HSBC in resuming plans to cut jobs after a pause, after its larger rival dusted off plans to cut around 35,000 jobs in June.
(Reporting by Iain Withers, editing by Maiya Keidan and Mark Potter)
