Lloyds Banking Group says 'digitization' will power more branch closures

Lloyds Banking Group — the £18.67 billion turnover UK-based bank — has promised that it will continue to use “digitization” to power a program of branch closures.

On a call to investors, the UK household name said it had invested £3 billion over three years, and £4 billion over five years, in transformation, a large chunk of which has gone on technology and cyber security.

That's starting to have a positive impact from an efficiency perspective and on cost to serve and cost to acquire retail customers," claimed Sarah Robson, senior manager, investor relations, Lloyds Banking Group.

"Our strategic initiatives have generated £1.5 billion of gross cost savings so far as a result of the strategy, and we continue to see further opportunities to reduce manual back-office processes from a finance perspective," she said.

"From a retail perspective, you continue to see kind of branch closures and using digitization ...