Spanish lender Unicaja is reportedly planning to slash over 1,500 roles and shutter over a quarter of its branches as part of its cost-cutting strategy.
Unicaja, which had recently closed $898m acquisition of local rival Liberbank, said it will lay off 1,513 employees, Reuters has reported.
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The redundancies constitute around 15% of Unicaja’s workforce.
Unicaja plans to close 395 branches, the report added citing Union CCOO, which is a leading union in the financial sector.
The combined entity has 9,700 employees in Spain and nearly 1,400 branches.
The Covid-19 pandemic and low-interest rates have pushed lenders in the European region to resort to measures like a merger to cut costs.
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By GlobalDataOther Spanish lenders such as Caixabank, Sabadell, and BBVA have also axed jobs to reduce costs.
As per the report, Spanish lenders have laid out plans to cut over 15,000 jobs as they try to shift towards digital banking.
Given the outcome of negotiations in the past, the actual number of redundancies could be lower, the report added.
A key aspect of Unicaja’s acquisition of a local rival is a potential agreement with the financial union, which is supported by annual cost savings of $225m by 2023.
Last week, the UK’s Virgin Money unveiled plans to shut down 31 branches as customers shift to digital banking.
The branch closure, which will take place in early 2022, will result in around 112 job redundancies.
