Alliance and Leicester to cut 350 jobs

Alliance and Leicester, the UK mortgage bank, is to axe up to 350 paper-processing jobs in the north of England in a bid to improve efficiency and slash retail banking costs.

The company is rolling out workflow software to automate some of the back-office jobs in its Merseyside offices.

The reduction in paper work is expected to speed up customer phone enquiry times to call-centres by cutting the need to pass data back to the back-office, the company said.

Alliance and Leicester said redundancies will be made on a voluntary basis.

A spokeswoman for the bank told silicon.com: "When we get all the applications in, it'll be a bit like a game of musical chairs. Voluntary redundancy will be offered to everyone who is not in management. The technology is not coming in until later this year."

The independent financial services company, which employs 2,000 people on Merseyside, is to shell out between £20m and £25m in redundancy payments later this year.