Nedcor is to close its Western Cape data centres at Edgemead in Cape Town and Paarl and in Pinetown KwaZulu-Natal by the end of this year as the troubled banking group restructures.
Colin Wheater, HR and communications director at Nedcor`s Group Operations Division, says it is difficult to predict the final number of people that may be retrenched, because apart from natural attrition, many people have been retrained and redeployed within the organisation.
"To maintain customer service levels, impacted staff were offered contracts and incentives to remain on board until the completion of the conversion programme," he says.
Nedcor also says the decommissioning of the data centres is necessary as ex-BoE accounts are transferred to Nedbank as part of the merger and restructuring programme that has been underway for the past 15 months. The Cape Town applications services facility will be retained.
The three data centres belonged to financial services group the Board Of Executors until acquired by Nedcor two years ago making the latter the country`s third largest bank in terms of assets.
However, Nedcor has struggled to consolidate the merger and its 2003 year end results showed that headline earnings plunged to R55 million from R2.5 billion the year before, with an attributable loss of R1.6 billion.
Staff costs are a major expense for the bank as its payroll currently tops R4.1 billion per year. The group has also had some worrying technology linked investments including a R1 billion loss on its shareholding in Dimension Data.
On Monday, Nedcor, the holding company for Nedbank, announced it was going to offer voluntary retrenchments to more than 22 000 staff in an effort to cut expenses.
"In order to minimize forced retrenchments, we have invited staff to apply for voluntary retrenchment. Those who qualify will also be given an option of voluntary retirement," human resources director Ivan Mzimela says.
The window period for applications is from 2 March until 31 March 2004. The acceptance of any applications will be totally at management`s discretion. A headcount on the number of staff who will be retrenched taken should be decided after Nedcor`s 16 March executive committee meeting.
The bank says it has been in constant communications with its staff and the trade unions about the changes.
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