Little opportunity for scalable growth has seen Lloyds Banking group leave the Irish market, but the bank says the majority of jobs will be saved.

Following a strategic review of its Bank of Scotland (Ireland) business, the group says the bank is to close its retail and intermediary business in the Republic. All strategic management and decision-making activities for Bank of Scotland (Ireland) will be transferred to an independent service company, which will perform various administrative functions relating to the banking business as the bank runs down its existing portfolio.

A Lloyds spokesperson told Recruiter that more than 800 of the Bank of Scotland (Ireland) jobs will be transferred, with 36 or less facing redundancy.

“These employees run our corporate bank for Irish customers. The plan is not to shut the bank down, but run those loans down. Some might be 10 years, some five years. You need people to run those loans and provide the customer-service function in Ireland. We are not shutting down, but we will provide that service and people will pay their loans off in the normal way.

“People will retain their roles. There might be some change and some employees might be retrained for different roles, but that is for the service company that will take these people on to decide. We don’t know who the service company will be. There is little work on that yet.”

The group’s other business operations in Ireland and Northern Ireland, including its Halifax branch network and customers-service centre in Northern Ireland and its insurance operation in Shannon, are unaffected by the move.