Standard Chartered Bank, one of Kenya’s top lenders, has begun a process to lay off about 200 employees which represent about 14% cut in its workforce as the bank looks to cut costs to cope with the coronavirus pandemic.

The decision to cut nearly one-fifth of all jobs has been communicated to the Banking, Insurance and Finance Union (BIFU), the trade union that covers financial industry workers in Kenya.

Most of the job cuts are expected to have an impact on retail, corporate, operations teams and some customer service staff.

“The impacted employees who are both in management and unionisable cadre are 200 in the retail banking, corporate banking, operations, technology and support departments,” the lender noted in a communique to the trade union.

The latest round of job cuts follows recent announcements of major bank staff losses at NCBA Bank, which said the pandemic had significantly affected its operations. 

Standard Chartered reported a decline in its half-year net earnings to KSh 3.2 Billion from KSh 4.7 Billion posted over a similar period last year. The Group’s unaudited results for the half-year period ended 30 June 2020 shows that the lender increased its loan loss provisions four-fold from KSh 378.9 Million to KSh 1.6 Billion.