Italian bank Intesa strikes deal with unions to cut staff costs
Banks reduce staff as they digitise operations
Intesa agrees 2,000 net early exits
Another 5,000 employees leaving will not be replaced
Adds more details on the deal in paragraphs 5-6,12
By Valentina Za
MILAN, Oct 24 (Reuters) -Italy's largest bank Intesa Sanpaolo ISP.MI said it would save 500 million euros ($539 million) in staff costs starting from 2028 after reaching an agreement with unions to fund an early retirement scheme for 4,000 employees.
The deal Intesa signed late on Wednesday comes days after rival UniCredit CRDI.MI negotiated with unions to allow early retirement for 1,000 employees, while committing to hire 500 new staff members in its branches.
Italy's top two banks are moving to cut their workforce in anticipation of increasing digitisation of their operations.
Technology advances are driving changes in banking globally, with artificial intelligence sharply reducing the need for staff dedicated to back-office functions.
Intesa, which is spearheading the transition to a cloud-based core banking infrastructure among Italian lenders, will cut around 7% of its workforce under a set of measures it announced late on Wednesday, Reuters calculations based on the unions' data showed.
Its employees in Italy, its main market, are set to fall to 65,000 from around 70,000 at present, Italy's main banking union FABI said. Employees currently total 93,800 globally.
Intesa will spread out the early retirements through 2027 and hire 2,000 staff to replace half of the people leaving, FABI added.
The bank said it would cut another 3,000 positions in Italy and 2,000 at its foreign subsidiaries by the end of 2027 by not replacing people who get to pension age or change job.
The positions being cut at the foreign units will all be in central functions, without affecting branch staff, Intesa said.
"With today's accord we've provided initial answers to help workers facing the digital transformation that will reshape banking in the coming years," said Paolo Citterio, FABI representative within the Intesa group.
Citterio said a new committee had been created to monitor the impact of growing digitisation on Intesa's operations.
Having budgeted 5 billion euros in 2022-2025 for technology investments, Intesa last year launched a digital-only bank whose cloud infrastructure it plans to extend to the entire group.
With technology allowing banks to automate processes which used to require manual labour, lenders can focus their resources on relations with customers.
In Italy, Intesa will hire another 1,500 people on "hybrid" contracts, meaning they will work part time directly for the bank and as consultants the rest of the time, according to FABI.
The 1,500 new hires will be dedicated to boosting sales of wealth management and insurance products across Intesa's branch network.
Intesa will book a net charge of around 350 million euros in the fourth quarter to fund the voluntary exits, with no impact on its 2024 net profit goal of more than 8.5 billion euros.
($1 = 0.9273 euros)
Reporting by Valentina Za; editing by Alvise Armellini, Lisa Shumaker and Jane Merriman
免责声明: XM Group仅提供在线交易平台的执行服务和访问权限，并允许个人查看和/或使用网站或网站所提供的内容，但无意进行任何更改或扩展，也不会更改或扩展其服务和访问权限。所有访问和使用权限，将受下列条款与条例约束：(i) 条款与条例；(ii) 风险提示；以及(iii) 完整免责声明。请注意，网站所提供的所有讯息，仅限一般资讯用途。此外，XM所有在线交易平台的内容并不构成，也不能被用于任何未经授权的金融市场交易邀约和/或邀请。金融市场交易对于您的投资资本含有重大风险。
所有在线交易平台所发布的资料，仅适用于教育/资讯类用途，不包含也不应被视为用于金融、投资税或交易相关咨询和建议，或是交易价格纪录，或是任何金融商品或非应邀途径的金融相关优惠的交易邀约或邀请。
本网站上由XM和第三方供应商所提供的所有内容，包括意见、新闻、研究、分析、价格、其他资讯和第三方网站链接，皆保持不变，并作为一般市场评论所提供，而非投资性建议。所有在线交易平台所发布的资料，仅适用于教育/资讯类用途，不包含也不应被视为适用于金融、投资税或交易相关咨询和建议，或是交易价格纪录，或是任何金融商品或非应邀途径的金融相关优惠的交易邀约或邀请。请确保您已阅读并完全理解，XM非独立投资研究提示和风险提示相关资讯，更多详情请点击 这里。
