Barclays Bank Kenya managing director Jeremy Awori. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Barclays Bank of Kenya (BBK) now says it will not let go of its
staff as a result of the ongoing restructuring exercise as it rebrands
to Absa, even as the lender’s headcount has continued to drop
over the years.
over the years.
The bank’s staff stood at 2,128 as at last
December following the exit of 78 employees under a voluntary staff exit
scheme in 2018, according to its annual report. The lender spent Sh479
million to compensate the retrenched employees.
“While
the transition is happening now, we have operated under Absa structure
from as early as 2015…we expect it to continue without impacting on our
staff count. At this point we don’t expect any changes in the structure
that we have,” said Anthony Mulisa, the bank’s transition programme
director.
However, the announcement is likely to offer
little relief to its employees as firms routinely face redundancy after
mergers, buyouts or divestitures, since the whole point of the process
is to achieve efficiency through cost cutting.
Ahead of
the June 2020 separation deadline, the lender had set aside Sh240
million for the process, with the figure expected to go up, Mr Mulisa
said.
The changes were sparked by the UK multinational’s move to
reduce its stake to 14.9 percent in South Africa’s Absa Group, its
former subsidiary through which it owned the Kenyan bank and nine others
in the continent, including in Botswana, Ghana, Uganda and Zambia.
All
the institutions are now taking on the Absa brand and cutting their
ties with Barclays Plc which provided them with technical and software
support, among other back office operations.
BBK expects all its operations in Kenya will change their name to Absa Group Limited by end of 2019.
Mr Mulisa said the migration process is aimed at reducing service dependency on Barclays Plc.
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