Lloyds Bank announces three-year digital transformation

Lloyds Banking Group will spend £3bn on a business transformation which includes significant IT investment.

As the private bank announced profits of £5.3bn for 2017, it revealed a three-year plan which includes digitising the bank.

Antonio Horta-Osorio, CEO at Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We will continue to transform ourselves to succeed in this digital world, and the next phase of our strategy will ensure we have the capabilities to deliver future success.”

The bank outlined four areas of focus on the financial needs and behaviour of the customer of the future. These are: customer experience; digitising the group; maximising group capabilities; and transforming ways of working.

“We will invest more than £3bn in these strategic initiatives through the plan period that will drive our transformation into a digitised, simple, low-risk, customer-focused UK financial services provider,” said a bank statement.

Lloyds Bank said it will invest in new technology to make banking simple and easier for customers, as well as reduce costs. This will include the “simplification and progressive modernisation” of its data and IT infrastructure, as well as other technology enabled productivity improvements across the business.”

With the fintech revolution in full swing, customer banking habits are changing and traditional banks are being forced to do the same.

Earlier this month, the firm cut about 250 jobs in its IT team, but offset this with the creation of 150 new positions focused on customer-facing IT. The company said these changes were driven by advances in the technology it uses to ensure it “responds to customers’ needs in a fast and efficient way”.

The cuts were part of a wider cull of more than 900 jobs, which involved reductions in commercial banking, risk, community banking and insurance, as well as cuts in the CIO office.