ING is preparing to lose nearly 2,000 staff members after spending €200m ($248m) on its ‘omni-channel’ digital banking system in the Netherlands.

These measures are set to reduce ING’s Dutch workforce by 1,700 full-time employees over the next three years. The Netherlands-based bank will also reduce the number of positions employed by external suppliers by 1,075. A pre-tax redundancy provision of €320m has been reserved for the fourth quarter of 2014.

This follows the 2,400 job reductions announced by ING in 2013 after poor financial results. This brought the number of redundancies announced in the previous 15 months to 7,500, approximately 9% of the Dutch bank’s workforce in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Ralph Hamers, chief executive, said: "In this environment, we need to continuously improve our service. We are creating a consistent customer experience by integrating our service channels in the Netherlands and by making a substantial investment to simplify and upgrade our IT systems. Unfortunately, the more efficient way of working will impact many of our employees. We will do our utmost to build on our track record of helping the employees affected to find new job opportunities."

The new IT system is set to share customer information across all channels, including mobile apps, websites, call centres and branches in an attempt to provide a more cohesive service. ING predicts these implementations will result in annual gross savings of €270m from 2018 onwards.

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