RBS planning to layoff 900 IT and back-office staff in the UK

At least 100 of the roles may be outsourced to India

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to axe about 900 IT and back-office staff in the UK.

Sources familiar with the matter told Reuters that the latest round of redundancies will affect workers in London, Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham, with other cities potentially hit too.

Around five per cent of the company's UK workforce - or 2,700 people - have been axed in the past few months. Most of the cuts have been at the firm's branch network, where it plans to lay off one in every 10 jobs in 2016.

"We understand how difficult this is for our staff and will be offering as much support as we can, including redeployment to other roles where possible," the bank said in a statement to Computing.

The bank declined to give specific numbers to Reuters, and has not responded to Computing's request for further comment as yet.

Reuters sources suggested that at least 100 of the jobs will be outsourced to India, where people will perform the same roles on lower salaries. This won't be the last of the cuts either, according to the sources, who suggested that more redundancies will be made in the upcoming months.

RBS is in the middle of a major restructuring, as it aims to get back to profit after eight gloomy years of losses. The company has been embroiled in controversy over that period - particularly with its IT.

Last year, the company was accused of breaching the Data Protection Act by editing customer emails, call transcripts and altering how it presented its record of correspondence. Prior to this, it suffered a DDoS attack that left many of its customers unable to access their online banking accounts, and in June last year it suffered an IT glitch that caused payment information to go astray for 600,000 of its customers.

In 2012 an IT disaster affected millions of its customers, many of whom were left unable to use even basic services for a period of seven weeks.