Lloyds Banking Group will reduce its staff numbers by a further 450, following an announcement earlier this year that it would be axing 930 jobs alongside hundreds of branch closures.

“Today’s announcement involves making difficult decisions, and we are committed to working through these changes in a careful and sensitive way,” a Lloyds spokeswoman said.

In February, the banking group announced that it would be investing more than £3 billion in the digitalisation of products and services for customers. With this in mind, Lloyds said that it would create 255 new roles – meaning a net reduction of 195.

“The group’s policy is always to use natural turnover and to redeploy people wherever possible to retain their expertise and knowledge within the group,” the bank said. “Where it is necessary for employees to leave the company, we will look to achieve this by offering voluntary redundancy. Compulsory redundancies will always be a last resort.”

The announcement follows research from consumer organisation Which?, which found that 2,868 bank branches had closed since 2015 – at a rate of 60 per month. In response to pressure on the number of branch closures, Lloyds said in a statement: “Customers are increasingly choosing to use digital and mobile channels for their everyday banking needs”.

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