Portuguese banking almost doubles the decrease in employees in 2016
Portuguese news agency Lusa calculated the number of employees who were dismissed, from the five most important Portuguese banks. Novo Banco is the front-runner.
In 2016, there were over 2,000 employees who left the five most important banks operating in Portugal, almost twice the amount of job cuts made in 2015. Over the past few years, banks have been making significant cuts in the number of workers and branches, in order to reduce costs and improve results — a process which should continue during the upcoming years.
According to the Portuguese news agency Lusa, Novo Banco was the institution in which more dismissals took place in 2016: up until September, it had decreased the number of employees by 1.062, either through voluntary rescission, early retirement and collective dismissal.
Novo Banco‘s runner-up is BPI: 392 employees were dismissed. Caixa Geral de Depósitos comes in third, with 297 rescissions; Santander Totta has 200 fewer employees and 126 workers left BCP.
Overall, from the data currently known by Lusa, in 2016, 2,077 employees left five of the Portuguese major banks, which represent 80% of the Portuguese financial system. This number is almost double the amount of dismissal which took place in 2015, when 1,133 employees left the Portuguese banks: CGD (448), BCP (336), Novo Banco (63) and Santander Totta (25).
As for bank’s branches, in 2016 there were almost 200 agencies shut down from the five major banks. BCP closed 53 branches, BPI and Novo Banco closed 52 branches each and CGD, 47. As for Santander Totta, it merged around 80 agencies in their commercial network.
